Queen’s Brian May has revealed that he has tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a birthday party, saying that he “made a mistake”.

Taking to Instagram in a pair of video messages named ‘Life After The Double Red Line’ – related to the sign given on a positive COVID test – May revealed how he and his wife Anita Dobson attended a party of a number of friends, believing they were “in a safe bubble”.

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“It’s kind of ironic for me,” he added, having been “incredibly careful” over the pandemic to avoid infection. May said he is feeling “truly horrible” after the positive test, calling it “the worst flu you can imagine”.

“Yep. The shocking day finally came for me. The dreaded double red line,” he wrote on Instagram with a photo of his positive lateral flow test. “And yes – definitely NO sympathy please – it has been a truly horrible few days, but I’m OK. And I will tell the tale.”

He added: “PLEASE take extra care out there, good folks. This thing is incredibly transmissible. You really do NOT want it messing up YOUR Christmas.”

In the video message, May added: “Last Saturday we decided we would go to a birthday lunch and we thought, well this is the last social function we would go to – not that we go to many anyway, we’ll chance it, everybody’s going to be triple-jabbed, everybody’s going to be with one of these things [a lateral flow test] which says you’ll be negative on the morning.

“It seemed to be set up very safely, but of course you kind of know you’re taking a risk and so we all went to the party,” he added, saying that, “in retrospect, perhaps we made the wrong decision.

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“It seemed like a safe situation. You have your negative tests, so what could possibly go wrong?” he added. “The new variant seems to be so incredibly transmissible that I’m not even sure that would have been safe – this thing is spreading at such an alarming rate.”

Following the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant new restrictions have been imposed upon the UK.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the government would not be “closing hospitality or stopping parties” while urging the public to take caution when attending social and nightlife events.

Elsewhere, May recently defended himself after criticism over recent comments regarding the trans community, saying his words were “subtly twisted” by a journalist.

May was criticised for slamming the BRIT Awards’ removal of gendered awards, and saying that Queen would have had to have a transgender member to be successful now.

“It’s a decision that has been made without enough thought. A lot of things work quite well and can be left alone,” May told The Mirror at ITV’s Palooza event in London last month (November 23).

Taking to Instagram a week later (November 28) he clarified his comments and said that he was the victim of “predatory Press hacks” who made him seem “unfriendly to trans people”.