Michael Dukakis Hospitalized With Pneumonia

Former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis has been hospitalized in Los Angeles with bacterial pneumonia but has twice tested negative for the new coronavirus, his son said Tuesday night.

Dukakis and his wife, Kitty, were staying at their second home near the University of California, Los Angeles, where Dukakis teaches each winter quarter, when he experienced respiratory symptoms, John Dukakis said.

Dukakis, 86, who served as governor from 1975-1979 and again from 1983-1991, was admitted to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Friday night, his son said.

He was tested twice for COVID-19, both tests came back negative, and he has been diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia.

The former governor’s condition is improving, his son said, but because of precautions taken by the hospital in response to the coronavirus pandemic, he cannot have visitors. He is able to speak by phone with family and friends, and he has been speaking daily with his son.

“He sounded better today than he did yesterday,” John Dukakis, 61, said Tuesday night by telephone from his home in Brookline. “He’s only upset that he doesn’t have a copy of any newspaper. He’s been savoring the New York Times from yesterday, just going through it. There’s not much he can do, so he’s a little bored. This is not his kind of thing.”