Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston has revealed that he has still not fully recovered his sense of taste or smell after contracting coronavirus.
The actor shared a video in July revealing he had caught Covid-19 “a little while ago”, saying he was “very lucky” as he only experienced mild symptoms.
At the time, he urged his fans to do what they could to stop the virus spreading.
Appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Cranston has now said that the only symptom that lingered is that “I have lost a percentage of my ability to taste and smell”.
“We were very lucky, though, in all seriousness,” he said. “We had a few days of achiness, but not enough to keep you in bed. I had a temperature of 99 for about three hours, and then just exhaustion for a week.”
He said of his sense of taste and smell: “I think about 75 percent has come back, but if someone was brewing coffee and I walk into a kitchen, I cannot smell it,” he said.
After recovering from the virus, Cranston donated some of his plasma with Covid-19 antibodies to the UCLA Blood and Platelat Center.
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GloveboxPimentaco on December 5th, 2020 at 14:30 UTC »
Losing my sense of smell is what clicked in my mind that I had covid. Couldn't smell my morning cup of coffee. Stuck my head into the trash bin just to be sure. Couldn't smell any of that.
I'm about 6 weeks from my positive test, maybe 7 or so weeks from first symptoms. I regained my sense of smell after about a week, but I still can't walk for more than 10 minutes without some sort of mild chest pain. Also have had a lot of random fatigue the past couple days.
There are quite a few "covid survivors" groups on facebook. The one for endurance athletes is just heart breaking. A lot of those folks have endured far worse issues for far longer than I. I used to be active 2 to 3 hours per day, ran, cycled & hiked all the time. People focus on the death statistics but don't think about the real possibility of losing the ability to do the things you love and the mental toll of not knowing if you will ever be able to do those things again.
shannister on December 5th, 2020 at 12:30 UTC »
Not being able to taste must be really weird and depressing.
CrystalFissure on December 5th, 2020 at 11:57 UTC »
Awful. The people who say “let me just get it so it can be over and done with” don’t realise that there’s very real risks of this shit happening to them, or worse. Some of the long term effects are horrible.