Heavy/HGTV/YouTube HGTV's Erin Napier
As HGTV kicked off a seven-hour “Home Town” marathon on Super Bowl Sunday, stars Erin and Ben Napier revealed they’ve been trying to “make the most” of being stuck at home in Laurel, Mississippi, after testing positive for COVID with their two-year-old daughter Mae.
Posting a series of Instagram photos from home on February 11, 2024, Erin wrote, “when 3 out of 4 get covid light, but make the most of it.”
Despite one photo that showed a thermometer reading of 102.2 degrees, Erin called their experience with the virus “covid light,” letting fans know in the comment section that they’d been spared the harshest symptoms.
Here’s what you need to know:
Erin Napier Says Virus Started With Daughter Mae Spiking a Fever
Fans, friends and relatives flooded Erin’s post with concerned comments and questions, including one who asked which of their foursome was “spared” from getting Covid. Erin quickly answered, “Helen!”
Erin also replied when her sister-in-law, Alison Napier, wrote, “Dang sister! I pray it passes quick!”
She responded, “we are all good! it started with mae getting a high fever then petered out quickly!”
Erin also explained in the comments that only Mae wound up with a high fever, writing, “thankfully only mae had a fever for a short time. the rest of us were spared”
Erin reiterated that her family’s symptoms were mild when one person wrote, “I had then Covid variant in August. No fever, head cold and cough. Took over the counter meds. Good in a week. Sorry you’re sick! Prayers for you all.”
“that’s the version we have too, thankfully,” Erin replied.
Erin’s collection of photos included one as she lay in bed at their country home, with her feet tucked under a blanket, with a view of Ben through the doorway, hunched over their kitchen table. She also provided a birds-eye view of Ben engrossed in playing the board game “Operation.”
Another photo showed their girls, Mae and Helen, 6, outside in their bathing suits as they watered flowers beginning to pop up in their garden beds. Erin also included a brief video of Mae planting bulbs in a large patch of dirt. Erin later said in the comment section they were daffodils.
Erin Napier Has Said She May Have Had One of the Earliest Cases of COVID
Swiffer Wet Jet WoodBen & Erin Napier.
This experience with COVID is much milder than the experience Erin had in early 2020, when she shared that she may have had one of the earliest cases of the virus.
On March 22 of that year, with much of the U.S. suddenly under lockdown while the virus rapidly spread, Napier revealed on Instagram that over a week after being in New York City for a “Today Show” appearance that January, she had come down with a “mysterious” illness, as did her 64-year-old mom and daughter Helen, who was two at the time.
“We returned to Laurel on January 9,” she wrote. “On January 20, I woke up early with some GI issues. I went in to work because I felt mostly normal. By 5 pm, I noticed I kept getting chills and checked my temperature and it was 100. I took some Aleve and the fever dropped and I went on about my business. I wrote in my journal a couple days later: ‘I feel like I have a cold, but not really. It’s like a half-cold. No congestion, but I can’t stop coughing. Still have low fever.'”
“I tested negative for the flu that day even though I continued to run low fever off and on, about every other day, for weeks,” Erin continued. “No medicine helped control my coughing, and it wasn’t a productive cough.”
Erin said her symptoms lasted a month and was explained by doctors as “a viral thing.” But in March, a “doctor friend” of hers reviewed her previous bloodwork and said it lined up with what they were seeing with Covid infections.
Later that year, in November, Erin wrote a poignant post about the grief she was feeling after so much had changed due to the pandemic.
“Lately I find myself daydreaming about 2019 and all that we took for granted,” she wrote. “I wish I could go back and spend one normal day hugging my friends and crew without thinking twice.”
“It all felt temporary for so many months, but it’s beginning to feel like part of me now, this thing I’m carrying that’s too heavy. I just miss the normal and am feeling the grief in it lately. But I know y’all do too. And I guess there’s some comfort in that. ❤️”