Former Polish president, Solidarity leader Walesa has COVID

FILE PHOTO: Former Polish president Lech Walesa attends a rally in support of Poland's membership in the European Union after the country's Constitutional Tribunal ruled on the primacy of the constitution over EU law, undermining a key tenet of European integration, in Gdansk, Poland, October 10, 2021. Bartosz Banka/Agencja Gazeta via REUTERS

Lech Walesa, the former Polish president and Solidarity trade union leader who played a leading role in the fall of Communism, has coronavirus, he said on Friday.

Originally a shipyard electrician in the northern port city of Gdansk, Walesa became a symbol of the historic changes that ended the Cold War, leading the Solidarity trade union movement which brought about the switch to a free-market economy in 1989.

"I can't believe it ... I am infected," the Nobel Peace Prize laureate wrote on Facebook.

FILE PHOTO: Former Polish President Lech Walesa speaks at a rally during celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the first free democratic parliamentary election in Poland, at the Old Town in Gdansk, Poland June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo

Walesa, 78, has suffered from ill health in recent years and underwent a heart operation in 2021.

Walesa served as president from 1990 to 1995, the first leader of post-Communist Poland.

In recent years he was a staunch critic of Poland's ruling nationalists Law and Justice (PiS), who in turn have been deeply critical of the transition from Communism to a free-market economy that Walesa led.

FILE PHOTO: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, gestures after an interview with Reuters at the hotel in Arlamow, Poland November 18, 2016. Picture taken on November 18, 2016. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/File Photo

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Anna Koper, Pawel Florkiewicz; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Alison Williams)