Poland’s Ex-president Solidarity Leader Walesa Has COVID-19

Poland’s Ex-president Solidarity Leader Walesa Has COVID-19
Former Polish president Lech Walesa in Gdansk, Poland, on July 18, 2017. (Dominic Lipinski/Pool/Getty Images)
The Associated Press
1/21/2022
Updated:
1/21/2022

WARSAW, Poland—Poland’s former president and former Solidarity pro-democracy movement leader, Lech Walesa, said Friday that he has COVID-19.

The 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate said on Twitter that he was surprised to find out he is infected despite the three vaccination doses he has received.

“I can’t believe it: I received 3 shot, .... (but) I’m infected. (I have a) headache, I can’t warm up my body. I feel like my flesh is tearing away from the bones,” Walesa wrote.

Walesa was fitted with a pacemaker in 2008 and last year he had a heart surgery.

In the 1980s, Walesa led the nationwide Solidarity movement that eventually toppled Poland’s communist leaders. He served as democratic Poland’s first popularly elected president in 1990–95.