CNN’s Chris Cuomo tests positive for coronavirus

The coronavirus crisis has become personal for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo after his CNN anchor brother Chris Cuomo tested positive for the virus. 

The CNN host revealed his diagnosis on Tuesday saying he had been exposed in recent days to people who had subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. 

Cuomo, who said he started suffering from a fever, chills and a shortness of breath, is now quarantining himself away from his wife and children in the basement of his home.

He said he will be filming his nightly CNN show from his basement. 

‘I just tested positive for coronavirus. I knew it was just a matter of time, to be honest, because of how often I was exposed to people,’ Cuomo said on his SiriusXM’s Let’s Get After It with Chris Cuomo show on Tuesday.  

He said other than feeling a ‘little lousy’ he was okay.

‘I am fine. I’m worried about my kids and my wife. I’m p***ed at myself about that,’ he said, joking in an earlier tweet that his family ‘seemed pleased’ about him quarantining in their basement. 

‘We’re living it. You’re living it. Everybody’s living it. This is the great equalizer, great equalizer.’ 

His brother, Gov Cuomo, addressed the CNN anchor’s positive diagnosis during his Tuesday press conference in which he said the number of cases had increased by 9,298 to 75,795 and deaths had risen by 332 to 1,550.  

Gov Cuomo said he last saw his brother in person about two weeks ago. It is not clear when Chris was exposed to the virus.  

Gov Cuomo said Chris was smart about social distancing but had still exposed himself to the virus as he used his brother’s case to urge essential workers to exercise caution amid the pandemic. 

‘My brother Chris is positive for coronavirus. He is going to be fine, he’s young and in good shape, strong, not as strong as he thinks, but he will be fine,’ Gov Cuomo said. 

‘But there’s a lesson in this. He’s an essential worker – a member of the press. He’s been out there. You go out there, the chance you get effected is very high.’

Gov Cuomo said the part of New York’s stay-at-home order specifically to protect people over 70 – known as Matilda’s Law – is named after their mother.

He said their mother had been in contact with Chris two weeks ago after she went to his home – and that he had advised his brother against having her stay there due to the risks for elderly and sick people.  

‘My mother was at his house and I said that is a mistake. My mother is… older and she’s healthy but I said you can’t have mom at the house,’ Gov Cuomo said.  

‘He said ‘no mom is lonely, she wants to be at the house. I feel bad she’s cooped up at the apartment’. I said I do too but you bring her to the house you expose her to a lot of things. You could expose mom to the virus.

‘We had a whole discussion. If he was exposed, chances are she may have been exposed. Then we’d be looking at a different situation than my brother sitting in his basement for two weeks.

‘It’s my family, your family – it’s all of our families.  

‘This virus is that insidious. We have to keep that in mind… remember who is vulnerable here and protect them.’  

Chris later said on his SiriusXM show that his brother had a valid point regarding their mother and that she had since been staying with their sister in Westchester. 

‘My brother’s beat me over the head a little bit with it right now about my mom, but you know, it’s not an completely invalid point. I did have her here with me because I thought it was safer for her out east than in the city alone. 

‘He did convince me to move her to my sister in Westchester a few weeks ago and that was the right move… because I am going to be exposed a lot.

‘Even though I loved her and I wanted her here, the same love was misplacing the smartest move.’

Gov Cuomo went on to describe his brother as his best friend and said he’s different to the ‘combative and argumentative’ person people see on TV.  

He said his brother was a ‘really sweet, beautiful guy’.  

Gov Cuomo had made an appearance on his brother’s show, which Chris filmed via video link from his basement, on Monday night.

Chris asked his brother whether he was considering a run for president given his approval ratings have increased over his handing of the coronavirus. Gov Cuomo said he has no plans to run for president. 

New York remains the nation’s deadliest hot spot, with about 1,550 deaths statewide, the majority of them in New York City. 

Gov Cuomo on Tuesday admitted that ‘no one knows’ when the pandemic will end and said the entire country ‘underestimated it’.

He told of how he was unifying the state’s private and public healthcare systems to operate as one before the pandemic ‘apex’ in the state hits.

He admitted he does not know when it will come and that data projections he looks at suggest it could happen anytime between seven and 21 days from now.  

Overnight, 18,000 people were tested in the state of New York. To date, there have been 200,000 tests.

Cuomo said the data is uneven and ‘bouncing’ so where it appears the death rates may be slowing, they are not yet.

‘It’s an imperfect reporting mechanism but the basic line is still up. We’re still going up,’ he said, adding that he was speaking to every expert he could find to rely on their projections and not ‘opine’ over what may happen.

He said he was ‘tired’ of being ‘behind’ the virus, adding: ‘We’ve been behind this virus from day one. The virus was in China. Unless we assume some immune system variation with Asian people, it was coming here.

‘You don’t win playing catch up. We have to get ahead of it.’ 

A Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds that docked in New York on Monday was expected to begin accepting non-coronavirus patients on Tuesday. 

A 1,000-bed emergency hospital set up at the Javits Convention Center began taking patients Monday night. 

The Billie Jean King USTA National Tennis Center is now also being transformed into a hospital. 

Field hospitals have also been set up in Central Park and even in hotels like the Plaza and St Regis. 

Makeshift morgues have been put in place at various hospitals across the city as the death toll continues to rise and healthcare workers struggle to keep up with the body count. 

Harrowing photos from Monday captured health workers using forklifts to load dead bodies onto a refrigerated truck outside a Brooklyn hospital.   

The last time that New York City deployed a fleet of makeshift morgues outside hospitals was in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

On Monday, the governor pleaded for help from volunteer medical workers, and close to 80,000 former nurses, doctors and other professionals were already said to be stepping forward. 

New York City sought to bring in 250 out-of-town ambulances and 500 paramedics and emergency medical technicians to help its swamped EMS system. 

The city’s ambulances are responding to about 6,000 calls a day, or 50 percent more than average, authorities said. 

Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said a five-day stretch last week was the busiest in the history of the city’s EMS operation.