The actor and his wife were diagnosed with COVID-19 in March.
Tom Hanks is getting real about his and Rita Wilson's battle with coronavirus.
The pair were the first celebrities to announce they had tested positive for COVID-19, after being diagnosed in Australia in early March. The pair have since recovered and returned to Los Angeles. In a recent interview with The National Defense Radio Show, Hanks said recovery didn't come easily -- especially for Wilson.
"Rita went through a tougher time than I did," he revealed. "She had a much higher fever. She had lost her sense of taste and sense of smell. She got absolutely no joy from food for a better part of three weeks."
According to Hanks, Wilson "was so nauseous, she had to crawl on the floor from the bed to the facilities."
The couple were quarantined in the hospital for three days after getting diagnosed, a measure taken because it was "relatively early in Australia's response to the coronavirus," Hanks explained. "They wanted us to not give it to anyone else. That’s why we were in lockdown," he said.
While Wilson's symptoms were more overt, Hanks recalled feeling "wiped" while trying to exercise. He was 12 minutes into a 30-minute set and couldn't get through it.
"Whoever it was, a doctor or nurse, would come into our air pressurized, isolation rooms. She said, 'How are you feeling?' and I said, 'I just had the weirdest thing. I just tried to do basic stretches and exercises on the floor and I couldn’t even get halfway through,'" he recalled. "And she looked at me through her glasses like she was talking to the dumbest human being. And she said, 'You have COVID-19.'"
Wilson, meanwhile, opened up about her recovery in an interview with CBS This Morning last week, detailing the "extreme side effects" she experienced from chloroquine, which is used to treat malaria and certain inflammatory conditions. She was given the drug to help with her fever, which she shared was close to 102 by day nine of her fight with the virus.
"I know people have been talking this drug, but I can only tell you that I don't know if the drug worked or it was just time for the fever to break," Wilson said. "My fever did break, but the chloroquine had such extreme side effects."
"I was completely nauseous and I had vertigo," she continued. "I could not walk and my muscles felt very weak. I think people have to be very considerate about that drug. We don't know if it's helpful in this case."
See more on Wilson and Hanks' battle with coronavirus in the video below.
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