Maynard James Keenan has revealed he contracted COVID-19 for a second time.

Speaking to Strombo on Apple Music Hits, the Tool/A Perfect Circle/Puscifer frontman says he caught the virus again in mid-November after originally contracting it last February.

“I…ended up in the ER on December 1,” Keenan explains. “Ugly, ugly. Couldn’t breathe. I could barely put two words together without going into a coughing fit that, you know? It ended up kind of also progressing into pneumonia.”

“If I stayed in the hospital, they said, ‘OK, we can keep you here, but you’re fighting 12 other people for a bed and a ventilator we don’t have, so what do you want to do?'” he continues. “I’m like, ‘Well, I need to breathe and I need to sleep.’ So, you’re just treating symptoms at that point.”

“Treating symptoms,” Keenan says, involved “real cough medicine” — “Not the crap over-the-counter,” he clarifies — as well as an inhaler and antibiotics.

Keenan talked about his first bout with COVID-19 in an interview with The Arizona Republic last October, during which he shared he was still battling after-effects including coughing fits and residual lung damage.

By Josh Johnson
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