Atlanta R&B singer Kelly Price, who was recently reported missing by some family members, told TMZ Monday that she was privately recuperating from a near-death experience with COVID-19.
TMZ on Friday reported she was missing and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution confirmed that a missing persons report had been filed. But Price’s attorney Monica Ewing told TMZ Friday night that Price was indeed alive.
“I was never missing,” Price said in the video interview with TMZ. “It’s disappointing that things came to this... I have never been in danger. I am not in danger right now.”
On July 29, she told the world on social media she had gotten COVID and had a “splitting headache” but was hoping for a quick recovery.
A week later, she said to TMZ that she entered the hospital as symptoms worsened, with a temperature of 103 and labored breathing. She returned home with oxygen and had home health aides check on her for the next four weeks.
“At some point, they lost me,” Price told TMZ. “I died.” She said she had a memory of waking up and a doctor asking her if she knew what year it was.
The 48-year-old Smyrna resident said she got her first clean COVID-19 test a week ago but has long-haul issues. “I am facing a very long uphill battle,” she said, her voice gruff, her eyes teary. “I have a lot of rehab to do. I have a lot of internal damage.”
Ewing did not reveal to TMZ whether Price had gotten vaccinated and Price has not addressed her vaccination status.
The confusion over Price may have been exacerbated by issues with her sister Shanrae Price, who went public Saturday about her sister’s “missing” status on a radio show. Price said she and Shanrae had been “estranged for a very long time.”
Price’s grandfather, Jerome Norman Jr., the former pastor at the Full Gospel Mission, Church of God in Christ in Queens, New York, died from COVID-19 in April 2020, the AJC previously reported. Six months later, her mother, Claudia Price-North, the former musical director at the church that primed Price’s singing career, died.
Price, who released a gospel album “Grace” in April, noted with TMZ that she had just also lost a grandmother before she was diagnosed with COVID-19 but didn’t say how she had died.
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