Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Monday that her husband (pictured right) has been hospitalized after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Klobuchar said her family received the test results early Monday morning and said her husband, John Bessler, is currently “cut off from all visitors.”
He started to feel sick when the senator was in Minnesota and he was in Washington, D.C. for his teaching job. According to Klobuchar, her husband was “checked into a hospital in Virginia” after he “started coughing up blood.”
In a statement released Monday, Klobuchar said:
I have news that many Americans are facing right now: my husband John has the coronavirus. We just got the test results at 7 a.m. this morning. While I cannot see him and he is of course cut off from all visitors, our daughter Abigail and I are constantly calling and texting and emailing. We love him very much and pray for his recovery. He is exhausted and sick but a very strong and resilient person.
John started to feel sick when I was in Minnesota and he was in Washington D.C. and like so many others who have had the disease, he thought it was just a cold. Yet he immediately quarantined himself just in case and stopped going to his job teaching in Baltimore. He kept having a temperature and a bad, bad cough and when he started coughing up blood he got a test and a chest X-ray and they checked him into a hospital in Virginia because of a variety of things including very low oxygen levels which haven’t really improved. He now has pneumonia and is on oxygen but not a ventilator.
While this is his story and not mine, I wanted to let my colleagues and constituents know that since John and I have been in different places for the last two weeks and I am outside the 14-day period for getting sick, my doctor has advised me to not get a test. As everyone is aware, there are test shortages for people who need them everywhere and I don’t qualify to get one under any standard.
I love my husband so very much and not being able to be there at the hospital by his side is one of the hardest things about this disease.
I hope he will be home soon. I know so many Americans are going through this and so much worse right now. So I hope and pray for you, just as I hope you will do for my husband. Meanwhile I am working in the Senate to get help to the American people.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also announced Monday that he will be in self-quarantine for 14 days after a member of his security detail tested positive for COVID-19.
As of Monday afternoon, Minnesota had 235 positive cases of COVID-19 and one death.
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Klobuchar Family” by Amy Klobuchar.
