Bruce Dickinson tests positive for Covid-19

Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson has tested positive for Covid-19.

The news follows his announcement earlier this week that he would be cancelling a number of his spoken word shows after a member of his “immediate household” tested positive for the virus.

Speaking to Rolling Stone about his diagnosis, Dickinson says: "I thought, 'Oh well, shit. I was kind of sneezing a bit. For a couple of days, I felt a bit groggy, kind of like the flu, and that was it. And I’m 63 years old. I’ve pretty much got no doubt that had I not had the vaccine, I could be in serious trouble."

When asked about vaccine take-up, he stopped short of saying fans should be vaccinated to be able to attend concerts, but urged people to go and get jabbed. "It is a personal choice. Personally, I think people are just very badly advised if they don’t go and get themselves double jabbed as quickly as possible, not for the reasons of going into concerts, but for their own health.

“Having said that, even if you’ve had a double jab, you can still get Covid, and therefore you can spread it to other people who might not have been vaccinated and they might get very sick and die."

Dickinson's postponed dates have been rescheduled for October 16 at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire and October 17 at The Alexandra in Birmingham. Original tickets remain valid. 

Dickinson isn't the only rockstar to have spoken out about vaccines in recent days. Kiss' Gene Simmons has given a new interview with Yahoo where he spoke about the backlash he receives when he shares his pro-vaccine thoughts on Twitter, blaming Donald Trump for his part in spreading vaccine misinformation and fear. "It's been politicised," he told Yahoo's Lyndsey Parker. "The gentleman who was in office, the former president, I knew before the political world. It's the same person I knew before; the stripes of a tiger don't change. 

"The unfortunate thing is that… Look, we all lie to some extent, but what happened the last four years was beyond anything I ever thought imaginable from people who had lots of power – not just him, but the administration, everybody. And unfortunately, that disease – The Big Lie notwithstanding – has really infected a large portion of the population."

Elsewhere, Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach – who has recently battled the virus – has been vocally encouraging people to get vaccinated. "I think every American should be mandated to be vaccinated," he told KNX In Depth. "There's no reason why not to – unless you have a pre-existing health situation where you can't get it. But other than that, the only way we're ever gonna maybe get back to normal is by doing that. Even if everybody did do that, who knows what it would be like? 

"But there's no way we can get back to quote-unquote normal if people aren't all gonna get in this together. There's no politics in health or medicine. Everybody is in it together. Everybody gets sick." Earlier this week, he told CNN "I don't understand politicizing medicine; it doesn't make sense to me. So my advice to the fans would be get the vaccine. You don't want polio, so you get the vaccine for that. You don't want COVID."