Tom Hanks details coronavirus experience, says wife Rita Wilson 'really suffered'

Tom Hanks has detailed his run-in with coronavirus, revealing that his wife Rita Wilson suffered significantly more with the disease than he did.

Hanks and Wilson were in Australia, where the Castaway star was in pre-production for the new Baz Luhrmann movie, when the couple tested positive.

They were then quarantined and hospitalised.

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“Rita went through a tougher time than I did,” he told the National Defense Radio Show in the US.

“She had a much-higher fever and she had some other symptoms. She lost her sense of taste and smell. She got absolutely no joy from food for a better part of three weeks.

“She was so nauseous, she had to crawl on the floor from the bed to the facilities. It lasted a while.”

Hanks suffered the virus less acutely, he added, saying that he had 'body aches and was very fatigued' during a three-days of treatment in hospital.

“Whoever it was, doctor, nurse, would come into our air pressurized room, our 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,’” he went on.

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

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Hanks and Wilson returned to the US at the end of March, after more than two weeks of treatment in Australia.

Returning to work, he hosted Saturday Night Live from his home last Saturday night, joking that he is 'the celebrity canary in the coal mine for the coronavirus'.

Read more: Hanks taking part in COVID-19 vaccine study

Wilson revealed in an interview last week that they are now participating in a coronavirus vaccine study.

Wilson told CBS's This Morning Show: “We've recently been part of a (research) study and we've donated our blood, and we're waiting to hear back if our antibodies will be helpful in developing a vaccine.

“But also if we are able to donate plasma that can be used as donation to other people who are suffering from the virus because we are immune.”