March 11 could go down in history as the day the United States actually started to take the threat of COVID-19 seriously.
On this day, the NBA suspended the 2019-20 season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Goberttested positive for the coronavirus. It was around the same time that America’s most beloved actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson announced that they had also contracted the virus.
Nearly one month later, the couple has recovered, and in her appearance on CBS This Morning Tuesday, Wilson discussed their symptoms, as well as their response to taking the experimental drug chloroquine that Donald Trump championed as a potential coronavirus cure.
Wilson remembers having chills, losing her sense of taste and smell, feeling “very tired, extremely achy, felt uncomfortable, didn't want to be touched," with a fever that reached 102 degrees. Hanks didn’t have as quite of a high fever or even losing his sense of taste or smell.
She was also given the drug chloroquine, or hydrochloroquine, which Donald Trump called “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”
“They gave me chloroquine,” Wilson said. “I know people have been talking about this drug. I can only tell you that I don't know if the drug worked or it was just time for the fever to break.”
While Wilson can’t determine if she was beginning to feel better as a result of the drug or because her fever broke, she does recall having some pretty frightening side effects.
“My fever did break but the chloroquine had such extreme side effects,” she said. “I was completely nauseous and I had vertigo. I could not walk. My muscles felt very weak. I think people have to be very considerate of that drug. We don't know if it's helpful.”
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Trump has "a small personal financial interest" in Sanofi, the French company behind the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine known as Plaquenil.
