Former LSU student body president shares his story of beating coronavirus

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - LSU’s plan to reopen for the fall semester comes as there’s currently a rising number of COVID-19 cases among younger people.

One young survivor was actually LSU’s student body president in 2019.

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Stewart Lockett was LSU’s student body president from 2018 to 2019. After a trip with some of his close friends, he thought maybe he was just having issues with his sinuses, but instead, it turned out to be the coronavirus.

“I believe the date was June 19 was when I saw some friends and we were all together, and that is where I presumed I got exposed to it [COVID-19]. Some of them also tested positive for it as well,” said Lockett.

Lockett didn’t really think his symptoms were particularly serious at first.

“I was kind of maybe in denial. You know, everyone has sinuses, and I think you kind of see that with young people, they think it’s something else, and then they obviously go get tested or are convinced to go get tested,” said Lockett.

He got tested after he found out he had been exposed to someone who had the virus and he was experiencing some symptoms.

“I think throughout the entire two weeks, I think the biggest one [symptom] was fatigue. Just an unreasonable amount of fatigue, body aches, coughing,” said Lockett.

After finally getting his results after a week-long wait, Lockett knew he was positive for COVID-19. Lockett also broke out with hives all over his body one night and was experiencing muscle aches.

"I guess you could say it's considered a muscle ache of the feet. My feet were very sore and if I would walk on them, it would almost feel like they were extremely tense," said Lockett.

Stewart is finally recovering, like most people who catch the virus, and is doing better.

“As a human race, we want to be around people and we have to acknowledge that. That is very important to want to be around others, but if you are going around others, you need to take extreme precautions,” he warned.

He hopes the stigma about people catching the coronavirus will go away.

“Most importantly, go get tested, whether you have been exposed, whether you’re having symptoms, or just because you want to know,” said Lockett.

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