Poland’s former President Lech Walesa, 80, hospitalized with COVID-19

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Lech Walesa, Poland’s 80-year-old former president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been hospitalized with a bad case of COVID-19, an aide said Tuesday.

A post on Walesa’s Facebook shows him on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask on, with a caption that says “I have been hit by Covid.” The aide, Marek Kaczmar, told Polish media that Walesa is seriously ill, but under good care in a hospital in Gdansk, the Baltic port city where he lives.

It’s Walesa’s second bout of COVID.

Starting in 1980, Walesa spearheaded Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement that nine years later led to the peaceful ouster of communism from Poland and inspired other countries to shed Moscow’s domination.

In 1983 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1990-95 he served as democratic Poland’s first popularly elected president.