“Tonight’s show is going to be a little different. Reality has set in all the way to the president, brace yourselves, not for a hoax, but for the next few weeks of scary and painful realities,” Cuomo said as he opened his show. “We do not have the testing data to make sense of our reality beyond what we know is the face of it for an overwhelming number who get sick.”
“And that face is mine. I tested positive. Scary, yes. As you might imagine. But better me than you,” he added.
Cuomo urged his viewers to use his case as “proof that you can get it too,” before urging them to follow the government’s social distancing guidelines.
“We have to do everything we can to avoid getting sick,” he continued. “We have to do it for ourselves, for those in the front lines that are saving the lives of people like me and many of you. Together as ever as one. That is our remedy.”
“My concern is what I may have put on my family, just like you would. That is hurting me way more than anything the virus can do,” Cuomo added. “I can’t go hug my kids.”
Cuomo also anchored his show from home on Monday, during which he interviewed New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, his brother. The next morning, the CNN anchor announced his coronavirus diagnosis on Twitter. “I just found out that I am positive for coronavirus,” Chris Cuomo tweeted. “I have been exposed to people in recent days who have subsequently tested positive and I had fever, chills and shortness of breath.”
During his daily New York coronavirus briefing on Tuesday, Andrew Cuomo addressed his brother’s diagnosis. “This virus is the great equalizer,” the governor said. “My brother, Chris, is positive for coronavirus. Found out this morning.”
Newsweek reached out to CNN for additional information.
On Tuesday afternoon, over 180,000 individuals had tested positive for COVID-19 in the U.S., with roughly 3,780 deaths and more than 6,000 recoveries. Nearly 76,000 of the cases are in New York state.
New York City is the region that has been hit hardest amid the coronavirus pandemic. At 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, the New York City Department of Health confirmed that 1,096 people have died due to the novel virus, with 41,771 cases confirmed and 8,549 hospitalizations.
