Karl-Anthony Towns is the latest athlete to speak out on the coronavirus pandemic. The Minnesota Timberwolves star player took to Instagram on Wednesday morning to reveal his mother, Jacquline Cruz, has been hospitalized for the last week and is currently in a medically induced coma. It has not been confirmed if she contracted COVID-19, but Towns believes she contracted the disease based on her symptoms.
“I think it’s important that everyone understands the severity of what’s happening in the world right now with the coronavirus, and I think where my life is right now could help, so I decided to do this video and give you an update of where I’m at,” Towns said during a nearly six-minute video posted to Instagram.
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“I was told early last week my parents weren’t feeling well. My first reaction to her was to go seek medical attention immediately,” he continued. There’s no reason to wait, just go to the nearest hospital. And after a couple days of not showing any signs of improvement, I was very adamant on the first day to go to a hospital and seek further evaluation.”
Towns went on to say his sister told the mother to get tested for coronavirus. Her health continued to get worse and she had a fever of 103. Towns said with the medicine she was taking, her temperature would get down to 101.9, but it would go back up again.
“Her lungs were getting worse, her cough was getting worse,” he added. “She was deteriorating. She was deteriorating — and we always felt that the next medicine would help. This is the one that’s going to get it done. This mixture is going to get it done.”
Towns said both his mother and father, Karl Sr., got tested for COVID-19. His father was released from the hospital but had go into self-quarantine as they waited for the test results. He also said the mother was getting better in recent days before she began to feel worse. Because she was having trouble breathing, she had to be put on a ventilator she’s now in a coma.
“Since that day, I haven’t talked to her, haven’t been able to obviously communicate with her,” he said towards the end of the video. “I’ve just been getting updates on her condition. It’s rough, and day by day we’re just seeing how it goes. We’re being positive; I’m being very positive. So I’m just keeping the strength up for everybody and my family.”
As of this writing, the coronavirus has infected more than 422,000 people worldwide and has killed over 18,000 per ESPN. The NBA had its first case of the disease on March 11 when Utah Jazz played Rudy Gobert tested positive for it, which led to the NBA suspending the season.
