Chris Cuomo struggles with more bad coronavirus news: 'It just breaks my heart'

Stephen Proctor
Updated ·4 min read

More than two weeks after being diagnosed with COVID-19, CNN’s Chris Cuomo revealed Wednesday night that his wife, Cristina, has now also tested positive. Cuomo has continued to broadcast while being quarantined in his basement, and from the beginning he has said that his biggest fear was to pass it on to his wife or one of his three children.

“It’s very rare for a family to be one and done,” Cuomo said. “Cristina now has COVID. She is now positive and it just breaks my heart. It is the one thing I was hoping wouldn’t happen, and now it has.”

Cuomo’s older brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has made frequent appearances on the show since the outset of the pandemic, said it was just a matter of time before someone else in the house became infected.

“It’s very hard for a person to quarantine in a home and other people not to get infected,” Andrew Cuomo said, adding, “So in some ways this was inevitable. Luckily it was Cristina, not one of the kids.”

Since his diagnosis, Chris has been sharing with the American people not just the physical effects, but also the mental and emotional stress caused by the virus, and Andrew reminded Chris that this is another chance for him to continue educating the public.

“This is what families are dealing with, right? The point of you communicating this rather than just taking a couple of weeks off, is you’re communicating to Americans what this is like, and by the way, this is what it’s like,” Andrew said. “One person gets the virus, other people in the home get the virus, you now have a mother and a father with the virus. You have three kids that you have to take care of. This gets very complicated very fast.”

Andrew also told Chris that his kids would step up, and that’s exactly what they did, giving Chris a reason to find hope in the situation.

“The kids stepped up, because mom is the core, right?” Chris said. “I mean, when mom goes down, you feel it. And they have stepped up, they’re helping each other, they’re more quiet, they’re focused on her, and hopefully it makes the family even stronger. But I gotta tell ya, it’s tough.”

Chris also admitted that he is taking the diagnosis much harder than his wife.

“Obviously I’ve been a little bit of a mess about this today so I’ve been talking to Andrew about it a lot,” Cuomo said. “The person who’s not upset is Cristina. Cristina takes everything in stride.”

Cuomo Prime Time airs weeknights at 9 p.m. on CNN.

Watch Chris Cuomo get emotional about his family after his coronavirus diagnosis:

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