Queen Elizabeth II has been infected with the coronavirus, Buckingham Palace said on Sunday, becoming one of the world’s most prominent figures to battle the virus and deeply rattling the country she has led for seven decades. The palace issued few details about the condition of the queen, who turns 96 in April.

“Buckingham Palace confirm that the queen has today tested positive for Covid,” the palace said in a statement. “Her Majesty is experiencing mild coldlike symptoms but expects to continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week. She will continue to receive medical attention and will follow all the appropriate guidelines.”

She met this month with her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, who was reinfected with the coronavirus and went into isolation. He last contracted a mild case of the virus in March 2020, as the pandemic was first engulfing Britain.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a severe bout of Covid around the same time and ended up in an intensive care unit. But even that alarming episode paled next to the news that the queen, who has reigned for longer than most Britons have been alive, has contracted a potentially deadly disease.

Buckingham Palace has labored to protect the queen from exposure to the virus. She retreated to Windsor Castle in early 2020 with her husband, Prince Philip, and lived in virtual quarantine for more than a year.

Elizabeth received a dose of a coronavirus vaccine in January 2021 at Windsor Castle, along with Philip. The palace has not confirmed any subsequent vaccine doses. Charles has said that he is fully vaccinated and boosted.

Philip died in April 2021 at age 99, and the queen was forced to isolate herself during his funeral service. A photographer captured a poignant image of her, grieving alone and wearing a mask, in a choir stall at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.

In recent weeks, the queen has begun appearing again public after a difficult stretch last fall, when she canceled several public engagements because of what Buckingham Palace officials described as exhaustion. Her frailty deepened anxiety that the second Elizabethan age was coming to an end.

The circumstances of the queen’s infection remained clouded in questions. Charles was at Windsor Castle, where she is in residence, on Feb. 8 for an investiture ceremony. Charles, who is 73, got the news that he had tested positive on Feb. 10 and postponed a trip to Winchester, England, at the last minute. His wife, Camilla, also tested positive.

Speaking to Sky News in June 2020, Charles said he “got away with it quite lightly” the first time he contracted the virus. “I was lucky in my case,” he said, “but I’ve had it, and I can so understand what other people have gone through.”

The queen marked the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne on Feb. 5 at her country estate, Sandringham. In a statement issued that day, she said she hoped that when Charles succeeded her, his wife, Camilla, would be known as queen — a major endorsement that the couple had long sought from the monarch.

“We are deeply conscious of the honor represented by my mother’s wish,” Charles said in a statement. “As we have sought together to serve and support Her Majesty and the people of our communities, my darling wife has been my own steadfast support throughout.”

The queen remains extremely popular, despite royal family drama.

Queen Elizabeth II has recently endured a bumpy stretch in the soap opera that is her family.

She stripped her second son, Prince Andrew, of his honorary military titles as he fought a lawsuit in a New York court on accusations that he sexually abused a teenage girl while a guest of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Her grandson Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, remain estranged from the family; the queen has yet to meet her great-granddaughter Lilibet, named in honor of Elizabeth, whose parents called her by that nickname.

The queen, however, remains enduringly popular: Her 76 percent approval rating is No. 1 among the royals, according to a poll last year by the market research firm YouGov. Charles polled at 45 percent; Prince William, the next in line, at 66 percent; and the once popular Harry at 39 percent.

“She has an instinctive understanding of the soul of the British people,” said Vernon Bogdanor, a professor of government at King’s College London. For all of the upheaval in the House of Windsor, he added, “The monarchy is seen as a unifying force of stability and of constitutional democracy.”

Only three other monarchs are documented to have reigned more than 70 years: Louis XIV of France; Johann II of Liechtenstein; and Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, who died in 2016. Elizabeth is already the longest-serving British monarch — she overtook Queen Victoria in 2015 — and the longest-serving female monarch. She would surpass Louis XIV, the Sun King, in less than three years.

Her reign spans the post-World War II era. When the queen welcomed President Biden to Windsor Castle in June, he became the 13th American president to meet her. She has met every president since Harry S. Truman, save for Lyndon B. Johnson.

She has been served by 14 prime ministers, starting with Winston Churchill. If the political handicappers are to be believed, she may soon be on her 15th. An outcry over gatherings held in Downing Street that breached pandemic lockdown restrictions has led to calls for a no-confidence vote in the current prime minister, Boris Johnson.

Tributes poured in from Britain’s great, good and merely prominent. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, told the BBC, “She takes her duties seriously, but she doesn’t take herself very seriously.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised her for her “inspirational sense of duty and unwavering dedication to this nation.”

Accession Day, as Feb. 6 is known in Britain, however, has always been a melancholy anniversary for the queen, as much about the death of her father as her own ascension to the throne. Although George VI had been seriously ill, his death was traumatic for Elizabeth, who was then a 25-year-old princess and by all accounts very close to him. She learned of his death while on holiday at a remote game-viewing lodge in Kenya.

Elizabeth managed some low-key festivities on the eve of the anniversary this year, cutting a cake and playing host to members of volunteer groups. Among her guests was Angela Wood, an 88-year-old onetime cooking student, who created “coronation chicken,” the dish served to 350 diners at the banquet on coronation day in 1953.

Mrs. Wood and the queen discussed the recipe, which calls for diced chicken, tomato paste, a dash of curry powder, brown sugar, a pinch of salt and a splash of red wine, later mixed with mayonnaise and puréed apricots.

“For a month or more,” she told the BBC, “I was cooking a chicken a day, and we had to alter the balance of the spices in the sauce to get it right.”

Four days of festivities to celebrate the queen’s Platinum Jubilee are scheduled for June. Among the events planned is a carnival-like procession of 5,000 performers through the streets of London, led by a dragon puppet the size of a double-decker bus. The government will also give everyone an extra day off.

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