Gospel singer Kelly Price, 48, is safe after being reported as missing by Georgia police, and now she’s opening up about her harrowing battle with COVID-19. “At some point they lost me. I woke up a couple of days and the first thing I remember was the doctors standing around me asking If i knew what year it was,” Kelly, who contracted the virus back in July, told TMZ in a video interview published on Sunday, Sept. 26. After the interviewer asked Kelly to clarify her “they lost me” comment, she responded, “I died.”
Kelly continued, “Going into the hospital, I actually had COVID for over a week but my conditions were progressing in the wrong direction from home.” The “Friend of Mine” singer said her “husband” was initially caring for her at home, but he too tested positive for the virus. After Kelly’s “temperature had raised to 103” and her “breathing was extremely shallow,” she went to the hospital.
While Kelly is home from the hospital now, she’s still dealing with lingering health issues. “I have what is called long COVID and I am facing a very uphill battle right now,” she told TMZ. “I suffered a lot of internal damage so I have a lot of rehabbing to do before I am able to be concert-ready again.”
In her TMZ interview, Kelly also addressed the reports that she went missing. She explained that she had left her home to recover elsewhere after being discharged from the hospital, and that she didn’t notify her family, whom she said she has a “strained” relationship with. “It hasn’t been two months since I’ve seen my sister. It’s been a year,” she said. “I haven’t been in these same room as her since my mother’s funeral. That now new for us. We’ve been strained for a long time.”
Cobb County police listed Kelly as a missing person on Friday, Sept. 24, TMZ previously reported. Per the outlet, Kelly’s family said they hadn’t heard from the singer after she left the hospital early, which led to Georgia police performing a welfare check at her home. Kelly was then listed as missing, but her lawyer later told TMZ that Kelly was in fact safe and recovering from the illness at an undisclosed location.