Mr. Christie said he had spent days in the intensive care unit of the Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey, after taking himself there on Oct. 3 at the insistence of his doctor.
“I believed when I entered the White House grounds, that I had entered a safe zone, due to the testing that I and many others underwent every day,” Mr. Christie said in the statement. “I was wrong. I was wrong not to wear a mask at the Amy Coney Barrett announcement and I was wrong not to wear a mask at my multiple debate prep sessions with the president and the rest of the team.”
“I hope that my experience shows my fellow citizens that you should follow C.D.C. guidelines in public no matter where you are and wear a mask to protect yourself and others,” he said.
Unlike Mr. Trump, who has posited that he feels like “Superman” and left the hospital as quickly as possible, Mr. Christie said that the virus is “something to take very seriously. The ramifications are wildly random and potentially deadly.”
Mr. Christie was released from the hospital on Oct. 10, and has now been cleared to have regular contact with others, he said. He was treated with a combination of blood thinners, the Ebola drug remdesivir and an experimental antibody cocktail produced by Eli Lilly. That drug trial was recently paused over safety concerns.
He said that he still suffers from some fatigue, but nowhere near the levels he did when he was first sick.