President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Friday that he felt mostly fine but was working more slowly after being infected with the coronavirus, as he pleaded with the French to remain vigilant and warned that “no one is sheltered from this virus.”
“I am doing well,” Mr. Macron said in a video posted on Twitter that he appeared to have recorded on a hand-held smartphone. “I have the same symptoms as yesterday — that is to say fatigue, headaches, a dry cough.”
The video broke with France’s decades-old tradition of secrecy around the health of its presidents, whose medical histories and conditions are rarely aired in public.
Mr. Macron, who is isolating at an official presidential residence in Versailles, west of Paris, wore a black turtleneck and stood in an office with a desk and the French and European flags in the background. His wife, Brigitte Macron, has tested negative, and was expected to remain at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
He did not appear overtly sick, with no signs of difficult breathing, but he seemed less energetic and spoke more slowly than usual. He said he was continuing to handle important day-to-day affairs.
But he acknowledged that he was “a bit slowed down because of the virus.”
Mr. Macron said he would give daily updates on his condition, although he did not specify whether he would do so by video.
“There is normally no reason that things would take a turn for the worse, but I am closely monitored medically and I will update you in a totally transparent way,” he said.
He added a warning that the country had recorded more than 18,000 new infections on Thursday, saying, “We must remain vigilant.”
Mr. Macron did not say how he might have been infected. French officials have raised the possibility that he was exposed at a meeting of top European Union officials last week in Brussels.
“I am very protected, I am very careful, I follow distancing rules, I wear the mask, I use hydro-alcoholic gel regularly — and despite all that I caught the virus,” he noted. “Probably a moment of negligence, a moment of bad luck, too.”
Prime Minister Igor Matovic of Slovakia, who also attended the meeting, has also tested positive for the coronavirus, the government said Friday, offering no further details.
Some other officials who had been in proximity to Mr. Macron are taking extra precautions. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain, who had lunch with Mr. Macron on Monday, suspended his official activities until Dec. 24. Portugal’s prime minister, António Costa, who lunched with Mr. Macron on Tuesday, planned to quarantine and get tested. Charles Michel, a top European Union official, went into quarantine after meeting with Mr. Macron on Monday, a spokesman said.
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