Actor Tom Hanks has revealed that he and his wife Rita Wilson have volunteered to donate blood and plasma, in the hopes of helping develop a vaccine for coronavirus.
Hanks, who hopes the vaccine will be dubbed “the Hank-ccine”, also discussed how the pair were doing after recovering from COVID-19.
Speaking on the NPR Podcast Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me, he said that they were “just fine, dandy” now.
Following their recovery, Hanks explained, “A lot of the questions [are] what do we do now? Is there something we can do? And, in fact, we just found out that we do carry the antibodies.”
“We have not only been approached, we have said, ‘Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?'” he added.
Hanks joked, “In fact, we will be giving it now to the places that hope to work on what I would like to call the ‘Hank-ccine’.”
Hanks and Wilson both tested positive for coronavirus in March and were among the first high profile figures to contract the infectious disease.
They were admitted to hospital in Australia, where Hanks’ upcoming Elvis Presley biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann was being filmed, and stayed there until their symptoms had passed and they could return to Los Angeles.
Hanks and Wilson have both talked about their personal experiences with COVID-19, with Hanks revealing that “Rita went through a tougher time than I did.”
Speaking on the National Defence Radio Show, he said she was “so nauseous, she had to crawl on the floor from the bed to the facilities” and added that she “had a much higher fever” and lost her senses of touch and smell.
Wilson also explained that she had “experienced extreme chills and shivering unlike anything I’ve ever had before”, explaining that she was later given chloroquine - an antimalarial drug that gave her “extreme side effects” including nausea, vertigo and muscle weakness.
