Tom Hanks was one of the first celebrities to be diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Both he and his wife came down with the virus while preparing to film in Australia.
They were in quarantine for a few weeks in Australia before returning to the states after their symptoms cleared up.
Now both he and his wife Rita are donating their blood and plasma for coronavirus research.
A lot of the questions [are] what do we do now? Is there something we can do? And, in fact, we just found out that we do carry the antibodies. We have not only been approached, we have said, ‘Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?’
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’
Hanks also talked a little more about the actual illness itself. He says that Rita had it worse than he did. She had a much higher fever and lost her ability to smell/taste for three weeks.
That’s now one of the common symptoms of the virus. Loss of a smell/taste. And from what we’ve read, it’s not the typical loss you might experience with a cold, where your sinuses are simply blocked.
This is more neurological. Your nose might be clear, but for some reason you can’t taste anything. Others say everything they tasted was sweet, even mouthwash.
It’s a strange virus, and every single day, we learn more about it. Hopefully in a few months, we’ll know how to treat it more effectively.
