SINN FÉIN LEADER Mary Lou McDonald has described how she was “floored” by the coronavirus and said she has never been so sick in all her life. 

The party leader revealed on 14 April that she had been diagnosed with Covid-19. 

Speaking on The Late Late Show last night, McDonald described the toll it took on her. 

“I have never been as sick as I was, every part of me hurt, it hurt to open my eyes, my eye sockets ached. It literally floored me, I’ve never experienced anything like it – this didn’t feel like a flu, this is a horrible, horrible illness,” she said. 

McDonald admitted that she was scared at times but added that she felt lucky that she is one of the people to come out the other side unscathed. 

“I feel very lucky, even when I was sick with the virus I was very conscious that people were sicker than me. People who were on ventilators, people who were losing their lives.

“By any measure any of us that come through this and come out the far end are lucky. I feel very grateful.”

But the Sinn Féin leader is still perplexed at how the virus actually ended up in her home. 

“I couldn’t understand how this virus had came into my house. I can only speculate, that’s the thing.

“We closed everything down politically within the party when this began,” she told Ryan Tubridy.

 ”When I was at the tail end of this around Easter weekend I started to get the shortness of breath and stabbing pains in my right lung.

“My husband doesn’t panic, he wouldn’t know how to panic, but he panicked.

“I was sick, a lot of people were a lot sicker – I can only imagine for an older person or person with an underlying condition that this is a very frightening prospect.”