Rita Wilson Joins Husband Tom Hanks in Donating Plasma to Aid Coronavirus Vaccine Efforts

Shortly after her husband, Tom Hanks, related that he would be helping with the development of a treatment for COVID-19 (the illness caused by the coronavirus), Rita Wilson is following suit. On Wednesday, Wilson posted a photo of herself donating plasma, which will be used to help medical professionals at UCLA develop a possible treatment for COVID-19. Her post comes over a month after she and Hanks originally shared that they had tested positive for the coronavirus.

“A photo of getting tested for antibodies in preparation of donating plasma,” Wilson wrote, captioning a photo of herself in the midst of making her donation. “Thank you Dr. Anne Rimoin at UCLA for the study you’re working on to help patients heal from COVID-19.” Hanks also shared on Wednesday that he had donated plasma recently. On Instagram, he posted a photo of his donation and wrote, “Here’s last week’s bag of plasma. Such a bag! After the paperwork, it’s as easy as taking a nap.” Like his wife, his caption also included his gratitude for Dr. Rimoin and UCLA for all of the hard work they’re doing amidst this difficult time.

In late April, Hanks made an appearance on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! podcast, where he discussed the fact that he and his wife would be donating blood in order to help find a treatment or vaccine for COVID-19. At the time, he also jokingly shared his suggestion for what a possible vaccine should be called.

“A lot of the question is what now, you know? What do we do now? Is there something we can do? And, in fact, we just found out that we do carry the antibodies,” Hanks shared, as Entertainment Tonight noted. “We have not only been approached, we have said, ‘Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?’ And in fact, we will be giving it now to the places that hope to work on, what I would like to call, the Hank-ccine.” As the actor went on to share, both he and his wife are doing much better now following their previous coronavirus diagnosis.

“We are just fine, dandy,” he said about the current state of their health. “We had all of the flu-like symptoms. My wife, Rita, was a little worse off than me. She had a very high temperature. And we were isolated so that we would not give it to anyone else.”