Music exec confirmed to have coronavirus 15 days after party with Tim Cook and Eddy Cue

Tim Cook (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Universal Music Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge has been diagnosed with coronavirus.
He held a party 60th birthday party 15 days before being diagnosed.
Tim Cook and Eddy Cue were in attendance.

Universal Music Chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge is in hospital after being diagnosed with coronavirus. This comes 15 days after he held a party to celebrate his 60th birthday, with the likes of Apple CEO Tim Cook and Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, present.

Symptoms of coronavirus – shortness of breath, coughing, and a high temperature – might not appear until around 14 days after infection, leaving open the possibility that the music executive has contagious during his party, according to a Variety report.

Cook and Cue weren't the only big names present for the event, with veteran music manager Irving Azoff also there for the party. The same Variety report notes that the location of the event – La Quinta's Madison Club in Los Angeles – has now closed as a precaution.

Communal facilities at the Madison Club have been shut down in response to Grainge's illness, said two people familiar with the matter. This includes the lush golf course and club house, said insiders. Management at the Madison Club did not respond to Variety's request for comment.

There's no suggestion at this time that anyone else has been infected as a result of the Lucian Grainge party, but given the highly contagious nature of coronavirus, it's likely all those in attendance will be seeking tests today.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.