CORONAVIRUS TALKS | Rita Wilson Opens Up About Coronavirus Symptoms, Warns About ‘Extreme’ Chloroquine Side Effects

Rita Wilson and her husband Tom Hanks were the first celebrities to reveal they tested positive for the coronavirus last month. Now, the singer and actress has opened up in greater detail about the couple’s symptoms and their experience with the controversial drug chlorowuine.

Wilson, 60, conducted her first interview post-coronavirus on Tuesday morning’s episode of CBS’ ‘The Talk’ with Gayle King.

The singer, whose rendition of Naughty By Nature’s ‘Hip Hop Hooray’ recently went viral, shared exactly how she was feeling as she and Hanks, 60, battled the novel virus in quarantine in Australia.

‘I was very tired. I felt extremely achy’, Wilson detaied her symptoms to King. ‘Uncomfortable, didn’t want to be touched and then the fever started. Chills like I’ve never had before. Looking back, I realize I was also losing my sense of taste and smell which I didn’t realize at the time’.

Wilson shared her fever reached its highest temperature about nine days following her positive test results.

‘I think it got close to 102’, she said.

The actress revealed she was given chloroquine, a drug that has been used to prevent and treat malaria that is being studies as a possible COVID-19 treatment.

She said her fever subsided after taking chloroquine, but she’s not sure if it’s the reason it went away.

‘I can only tell you that I don’t know if the drug worked or if it was just time for my fever to break, but my fever did break’, she explained. ‘But the chloroquine had extreme side effects’.

After being treated with chloroquine, Wilson shared she felt ‘completely nauseous’, and suffered from vertigo.

‘I could not walk’, she said. ‘My muscles felt very weak’.

‘I think people have to be very considerate about that drug’, the star added. ‘We don’t really know if it’s helpful in this case’.

As for her famous husband, Wilson admitted Hanks experienced ‘milder symptoms’.

‘He didn’t have as high of fever. He did not lose his sense of taste or smell, but it still took us the same time to get through it’, she added.

The couple reportedly spend five days in a Queensland, Australia, hospital before remaining in isolation for weeks. Following their recovery, the duo was spotted for the first time at their Los Angeles home in late March.

Wilson confirmed that while she and Hanks still do not know for sure where or from whom they contracted the virus, they’ve learned they were both exposed to it ‘at the same time’.

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