By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
American civil rights icon Jesse Jackson received his first COVID vaccination dose in January and urged Black people to get inoculated [File: AFP].
Civil rights leader and former Democratic politician Jesse Jackson and his wife have both been hospitalised after testing positive for Covid-19, the group he founded said in a statement.
Jackson, 79 and his wife Jacqueline, 77, were admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, the statement issued by the Rainbow PUSH Coalition said.
“There are no further updates at this time. We will provide updates as they become available,” the statement added, noting that anyone who was in the vicinity of the couple in recent days should follow public health guidance.
Jackson, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, had spent decades advocating for the rights of Black Americans and other minorities dating back to the turmoil of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, spearheaded by his mentor Martin Luther King.
He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting
Jackson has remained active and has advocated for COVID-19 vaccines for Black people, who lag behind white people in the United States’ vaccination drive.Black voters and many white liberals in mounting unexpectedly strong campaigns but falling short of becoming the first Black major party White House nominee.
Earlier this month, he was arrested outside the US Capitol during a demonstration calling for Congress to end the filibuster in order to support voting rights.
COVID-19 vaccines are free and widely available in the United States, though only half of the total population is fully vaccinated.
The highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly worldwide and in the US, where the seven-day average of new cases has risen to 133,000 a day, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Hospitalisations in the US are averaging more than 11,000 per day and daily deaths from COVID-19 have risen to 641, according to the CDC.