Coronavirus-stricken CNN host Chris Cuomo has shared X-rays of his lungs which show the effects of the virus up close.
Cuomo, 49, tested positive for COVID-19 on March 29 and has continued to update viewers on his progress each night during his evening show on the news channel.
On Monday he shared the photographic evidence of the effects the disease is having on his lungs, after he became concerned that he could be developing pneumonia.
After CNN’s Chris Cuomo tested positive for the coronavirus, he shared his chest X-rays with Dr. Sanjay Gupta to demonstrate how the virus impacts the lungs
He said without properly understanding what he was seeing, he was ‘in a panic’
‘I have to tell you it is scary to have your lungs go up there and see that stuff and be like, “What is that? What is that smoke in there?” And they tell you that’s the virus,’ Cuomo said on his show, Cuomo Prime Time.
‘You have to fight to keep it out. I’m doing fine. I don’t have pneumonia. But if I want to stay that way, I got to have some things fall in my favor.’
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, said the X-rays did not show anything alarming and that he did not appear to have pneumonia.
‘It looks pretty good,’ said Gupta. ‘Maybe a little bit of fluid, but not something that I would definitively call pneumonia.’
His doctor assured him that his lungs didn’t look too bad but that there was some excess fluid
Cuomo explained that his fever began to subside over the weekend but he felt as though the illness had spread to his chest and he began to move around in an effort to combat the virus.
‘I now know that I can’t just take it with this thing,’ he said. ‘That when the fever spikes, you just want to curl up in a ball and stay there for the next 6-7 hours, and you can’t. You’ve got to bundle up your clothes, you’ve got to start drowning yourself in fluids, you’ve got to take the Tylenol, and you’ve got to get after it.
‘If you don’t want it to get into your lungs, you’ve got to force yourself to breathe. You’ve got to get up off your ass, you got to walk around. It hurts, you don’t want to do it, everything in your body is telling you not to do it. It’s lying to you, and I know that now, and the more I do, the more I push myself to do, the better I’m getting, so I’m gonna take faith in that for now.’
Cuomo spoke to another doctor who gave him exercises to do including trying to hold his breath for 10 seconds.
‘He said “I saw your X-rays, it’s in your lungs. And you got the right fear and you got the wrong approach. You can’t wait it out.” He said, “You have to fight. And not in some silly metaphorical way… You’ve got to do the things that will beat this virus. You’ve got to breathe deep when it hurts”‘, the doctor told Cuomo.
‘When you get a fever spike, and that hurts, he said, “You can’t take confidence that it’s going to go down… you’ve got to layer up, you’ve got to drink, you’ve gotta take Tylenol, and you’ve gotta fight back. You’ve gotta make that fever go down any way you can.”‘
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and his New York Governor brother Andrew Cuomo, left, engaged in a round of playful sibling banter during the latter’s coronavirus press briefing on Thursday
Chris revealed that he’s been suffering fevers so severe that he hallucinated a conversation with their late father Mario Cuomo (pictured with Andrew and Chris)
Cristina Cuomo posted this photo of her husband along with the update on his health
On Monday, Cuomo’s wife, Cristina, said her husband’s condition was starting to improve.
‘After one week of up and down symptoms—chills, body aches, total exhaustion, sleeplessness, and a fever that hit 103, he is on day 11 today, (day 1 being first day of allergy-like symptoms),’ she wrote.
Cuomo’s oxygen levels were also normal after testing daily with an oximeter, a noninvasive device that monitors oxygen saturation.
She wrote how her husband had been eating a nutrition plan of ‘whole, vital, organic foods’ like chicken soup and foods ‘low in immune-busting chemicals like pesticides.’
Additionally, Cristina said Cuomo gets 30 minutes of sunshine, completing breathing exercises, taking walks around the yard and sat in a home sauna.
Cristina said Cuomo still has ‘incredible lethargy,’ but his fever had fallen to 99 degrees for the past three days.
Cristina Cuomo shared an update of husband Chris’ health condition on Instagram
Cuomo, who is the younger brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had previously told how he had lost 13 pounds in three days and even chipped a tooth because he was shivering from coronavirus symptoms.
Cuomo has warned against the dangerous, fake cures that are circulating on the internet.
‘I think we have to be very careful about people preying on desperation,’ he warned as he appeared on a CNN town hall about the coronavirus on Thursday night.
‘People are selling a lot of lies and people are buying it up because of the desperation. I get it but they don’t work, there’s no proof in any of them,’ he warned.
‘I think we have to be very careful about people preying on desperation.’
But he did applaud the simple recipe of chicken soup, saying that it was helping to break the fever.
He added that his fever hits worse at night time but that he is continuing with his show despite offers from his CNN co-workers to take a break.
‘I’m doing well. The beast comes at night,’ he told Cooper last week during an interview.
Cuomo has been delivering updates on his condition and the severity of his coronavirus symptoms from his basement having officially tested positive last Tuesday.
He previously revealed that he was suffering a fever so debilitating that he hallucinated a conversation with his late father, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who died five years ago.
The death toll from the pandemic now stands at 11,000 with more than 368,000 confirmed infections across the United States
Figures show the number of fatalities in the US has increased drastically by 7,000 in the first six days of April. It is almost double the 4,000 deaths that were recorded for the entire month of March when the coronavirus started to spread rapidly across the country