A staffer on '3rd Hour Today' has tested positive for COVID-19, co-anchors Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie revealed on-air.
Today show has officially been hit with the coronavirus. Co-anchors Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie shared the news first thing Monday morning, revealing that a staffer on 3rd Hour Today has tested positive for COVID-19.
“So out of an abundance of caution, Craig [Melvin] and Al [Roker] have taken the morning off so we can trace their contacts, see what’s going on with them,” Guthrie said of their co-hosts, revealing, “Both are fine right now. They feel good.”
Kotb interjected, “Yeah, they said they feel great.”
“But caution is the order of the day,” Guthrie continued, with Kotb adding, “We are just trying to play exactly by the rules. We hope and wish that they come back soon.”
Following their regular duties during Today’s first two hours, the pair took over hosting 3rd Hour Today where Kotb revealed that the unnamed staffer was “getting treatment.”
Meanwhile, the hour’s other two co-hosts, Dylan Dreyer and Sheinelle Jones, are not affected as both have been off the show for a few weeks.
Dreyer recently gave birth to her second child at the beginning of January while Jones has taken time off to recover from surgery to remove lesions from her vocal cord in February. She was expected to be out for six weeks.
Despite a staffer testing positive for the novel coronavirus, the morning show didn’t indicate it would shut down production and continued to air as scheduled on Monday. Guthrie and Kotb, however, did maintain their distance, sitting six feet apart and implementing social distancing rules on set.
“We are fully supporting our colleague, who is experiencing mild symptoms and receiving medical care, and I know you join me in sending our very best for a quick recovery," Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC News, said in a statement via Today.com.
The show also reported that “NBC is identifying employees who were in close proximity to the affected staffer and is in the process of asking them to self-isolate.”
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