In a brave and revealing account of his new reality, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo broadcasted Wednesday from the basement of his home, where he was quarantined after testing positive for the novel coronavirus. Cuomo said in an interview with medical reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta that the anchor experienced rigors—which spark shivering—so severely that he chipped a tooth. “Last night, I had one of the wildest nights of my life,” Cuomo said Wednesday. “I’ve never experienced anything like it, thanks to this virus.”
He described fever chills and accompanying dreams like the ones he remembers as a kid. Only, his recent ones were 10 to 15 times worse and left him sweating on his basement floor. “I saw my (late) father. I was having like hallucinations of people walking around,” Cuomo said.
In addition to the physical effects of the virus, he also said he feels “powerless” and worries about what could happen. “It’s totally opened a different window for me in my heart for all those who’ve had to watch their loved ones slip away and go into the hospital where they can’t visit, and have them in places where they can’t say goodbye,” Cuomo said.
The anchor said he has approached his quarantine with strictness, his wife only coming to the top of the stairs and exchanging food trays. He also uses a blood oxygen sensor to monitor his chest situation, which has improved. "It's not easy. It is necessary, and that's enough," Cuomo said of social distancing. "My greatest worry's obviously my family, just like yours."
At least 4,800 people in the United States have died after contracting COVID-19, and more than 200,000 people have been infected, The New York Times reported. New York, the United States’ epicenter for the deadly virus, reported more than 83,800 cases Thursday, with 1,941 deaths.
The numbers have prompted multiple states to implement orders requiring residents to stay home, distance themselves from others, and only leave their homes for essential purposes, but some state officials have been dragging their feet to implement the orders. Arkansas, Iowa, North and South Dakota, and Nebraska still haven't implemented an order requiring residents to stay home; Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming have only enacted stay-at-home orders in parts of the states, according to The New York Times.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis implemented a statewide stay-at-home order Wednesday, which he attributed to a consult with President Donald Trump, according to the Miami Herald. “This is what we are going to be fighting for a month," DeSantis said. "There is not going to be any kind of return to normalcy. People thought Easter. ... That is not going to happen.”
Cuomo called out the governor for his decision to allow vacationers to travel to and from his state while rejecting a cruise ship struggling to find a port to dock at. "I got to tell you it's no small irony that he doesn't want people from the cruise ship in Florida, but he allows spring-breakers to go home all over the place, all over this country,” Cuomo said. “And now we're hearing about people getting sick in communities that wouldn't have had exposure otherwise."
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