Rita Wilson is opening up about her experience with the coronavirus after she and husband Tom Hanks were two of the first public figures to reveal they had tested positive for COVID-19 more than a month ago. The actress and singer spoke to CBS This Morning‘s Gayle King on Tuesday, revealing the believed source of their infection and some of the severe symptoms that marked their diagnosis.
Wilson explained she and Hanks were told they were exposed to the virus at the same time from the same person, but that they didn’t know when or where it happened, as none of their close contacts, co-workers or family tested positive. Australian officials said last month that the pair were believed to have contracted the coronavirus in the U.S. or while traveling to Australia, where Hanks was filming Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis Presley movie and Wilson was performing concerts to promote her new album, Halfway to Home. At the time of their diagnosis, the pair had been in Australia for at least a week, and only 130 non-contact cases had been recorded in the country at the time.
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Once Wilson became ill, she felt “very tired, extremely achy, uncomfortable, didn’t want to be touched,” she told King, had a 102-degree fever by day nine, chills and lost her sense of taste and smell. Hanks, meanwhile, didn’t suffer as high of a fever and did not lose his sense of taste and smell. After recovering in isolation for 14 days in an Australian hospital, the pair was transferred to the U.S., where they have continued social distancing and sheltering place while feeling “completely normal.”
Wilson also revealed that she and Hanks have been told they are immune to the coronavirus now, and have donated blood as part of a study in which antibodies developed in the bodies of people who have been infected could be a key part of developing a vaccine. The two could also potentially donate plasma to help people more directly, but are waiting on the final ruling from doctors.
As of Tuesday morning, there have been nearly 2,000,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus worldwide with 120,914 deaths, according to data gathered by Johns Hopkins University. In the United States, there have been 582,634 confirmed cases with 23,649 deaths.
