CNN’s Chris Cuomo Compares Home Life Under Coronavirus Quarantine to ‘Lord of the Flies’

CNN’s Chris Cuomo is sharing an update on his family’s new existence as both he and wife Cristina recover from positive COVID-19 diagnoses. Cuomo, who has been chronicling his battle with coronavirus for the past two weeks, appeared alongside CNN anchors Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta ahead of the network’s Coronavirus Town Hall Special to share more details on his wife’s diagnosis.

“This was tough, for Cristina to get it” Cuomo said, calling it “frustrating” that when it comes to the pandemic disease, they “have a lot of fear and not a lot of facts.” Because of their lack of information on COVID-19’s ability to infect someone a second time, Cuomo revealed he and and his wife have been self-isolating separately, which has left their three kids — 17-year-old daughter Bella, 14-year-old son Mario, and 11-year-old daughter Carolina — with more power in the household than usual.

“My wife and I have to be separated for another two weeks, which means our house is dependent on a 17-year-old, my daughter Bella, who’s stepping up,” Cuomo said praising Bella for really stepping it up for her younger siblings but joking, “but you may hear them because this is now Lord of the Flies — the kids are in control.”

Cuomo continued that his wife’s experience with COVID-19 has been completely different than his. “We have completely different symptoms, thank God. She’s stronger than I am. She’s got a stronger immune system, a stronger constitution and a stronger character,” he said. “She lost her sense of smell and taste, but no fever. She got a lot of sinus pressure in her head, a little bit of lethargy. And a little bit of residual frustration at me, because I’m almost certain how she got it.”

Cuomo broke the news of his wife’s positive test Wednesday on Cuomo Prime Time. “Cristina now has COVID, she is now positive and it just breaks my heart. It is the one thing I was hoping wouldn’t happen and now it has,” he said. “Obviously I’ve been a little bit of a mess about it today, so I’ve been talking to Andrew about it a lot. The person who’s not upset is Cristina. Cristina takes everything in stride and so far we’re hoping, and a lot of this is anecdotal because we don’t know that much, she lost her sense of smell and taste. This is not science, but anecdotally the cases that I hear about that are more mild tend to have that. I didn’t have that.”