Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have beaten COVID-19 themselves, and now they’re pitching in on the global fight against the virus.
The duo, both 63, shared images on social media Wednesday of their contribution to coronavirus research at UCLA. Hanks showed a bag of plasma that he’d donated to the university, and Wilson showed how she was tested for antibodies prior to making her own donation.
Plasma from people who have survived COVID-19 can contain antibodies to the disease. Researchers are investigating the use of this plasma to help patients battling severe cases of the virus recover faster.
Hanks said that after the paperwork, the procedure was “as easy as taking a nap.”
Last week, Hanks had put out a call on Twitter for donations to a study led by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and David Geffen School of Medicine.
In the latest updates, Hanks and Wilson both shouted out the study’s leader, Dr. Anne Rimoin, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology who serves as public health professor and director of the Center for Global and Immigrant Health at the university.
In an interview on the NPR podcast “Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me” earlier this week, Hanks announced that he and his wife wanted to use their possible immunity to help in any way they could and that they had offered to donate plasma.
The couple returned to the US from Australia at the end of March, following two weeks quarantined on the country’s Gold Coast after they tested positive for the virus. During the course of their infection, which saw them both hospitalised for three days initially, they reported fevers, body aches and fatigue, among other symptoms.