'I was wiped': Tom Hanks details his battle with coronavirus in hospital

Actor said the ‘weirdest thing’ happened while in isolation

Tom Hanks has detailed what it was like being in hospital with coronavirus.

The actor and his wife Rita Wilson tested positive for Covid-19 in March. They were in Australia at the time, where Hanks was filming Baz Luhrmann’s biopic on Elvis Presley.

Speaking on The National Defense Radio Show, Hanks said he had “bad body aches and was very fatigued”, and he was exhausted after just a 12 minutes of exercise.

“I was wiped” he said. “Whoever it was, a doctor or nurse, would come into our air pressurised isolation rooms. She said, ‘How are you feeling?’ and I said, ‘I just had the weirdest thing. I just tried to do basic stretches and exercises on the floor and I couldn’t even get halfway through.’

“And she looked at me through her glasses like she was talking to the dumbest human being. And she said, ‘You have COVID-19.'”

Discussing the differences between his and Wilson’s symptoms, Hanks added: “Rita went through a tougher time than I did. She had a much higher fever. She had lost her sense of taste and sense of smell. She got absolutely no joy from food for a better part of three weeks.”

He said at one point, Wilson “was so nauseous, she had to crawl on the floor from the bed to the facilities”.

The couple have recovered and returned back home to Los Angeles. Having been told they are now immune from the virus, Hanks and Wilson have donated their blood as part of a study to see whether their antibodies can help develop a vaccine.