Whoopi Goldberg believes she was sick with Covid-19 a year ago: 'it's no joke'

The actress was admitted to hospital with sepsis and pneumonia last year

Whoopi Goldberg suffered from sepsis and pneumonia in March 2019. EPA

The outbreak of Covid-19 was first identified in China in December 2019.

However, Whoopi Goldberg believes the illness she was struck down with early last year may have been an early form of the coronavirus that has caused a global pandemic.

The Ghost actress, 64, was admitted to hospital in March 2019 for several weeks, suffering from pneumonia and sepsis.

In an interview on the UK's Loose Women TV show this week, in which she appeared by video link from her home in New York, Goldberg said her illness shared similarities with Covid-19.

“I personally think that people like me last year had some form of this and it evolved into Covid-19,” she said.

'I'd never been that sick': Goldberg urges people to socially distance

“But this is no joke, because I was in the hospital for about a month. I’d never been that sick in my life. It was crazy.”

The actress, who is a panellist on US chat show The View, was off work between February and March.

Goldberg, who has won Tony, Emmy, Grammy and Academy Awards, urged viewers to follow government advice and practise social distancing.

"[The government have] basically said you want to keep yourself away from people or you want to make sure you have on a mask," she said. "And I’m a believer that if you’re telling me the way to get rid of this thing is to wear a mask and to stay in my house, I’m not going to doubt it."

Acknowledging that many people are feeling stir-crazy after months of staying at home, the Sister Act star was insistent that people needed to have patience.

"People are dying and we've got to pay attention. Of course people are saying 'we want to go back to work', 'we want to get out'. [We can't] until we're at a place where we've got a handle on this," she said of the situation in the US.