Celebrity1 min(s) read
Published 12:57 30 Apr 2020 GMT
Tom Hanks has taken to social media to share pictures of his donations of plasma, that he offered in order to assist with finding a cure to the novel coronavirus.
The 63-year-old posted the pictures to his 16.7 million followers after publicly promising to donate his blood, alongside his wife, Rita Wilson, who also contracted and recovered from COVID-19.
"Here’s last week's bag of plasma. Such a bag! After the paperwork, it’s as easy as taking a nap. Thanks @arimoin and UCLA. Hanx," he captioned the tweet.
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Earlier this month, the actor appeared on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! where he disclosed that he and Rita had both taken antibody tests, which confirmed they have had the coronavirus and currently have antibodies in their blood - which can be used to help find a vaccine.
"We have not only been approached; we have said, 'Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?' And, in fact, we will be giving it now to the places that hope to work on what I would like to call the Hank-ccine," he said.
Host Peter Sagal responded, "There could be no better ending to this international catastrophe than if the cure turns out to be the blood of Tom Hanks," to which Hanks jokily replied, "I'm not trying to hog it with a copyright or - you know, I'm not going to the patent office."
This comes after Hanks sent a letter and a Corona brand typewriter to a child who wrote to him about being bullied over his name, Corona, per Australian television networks,
Eight-year-old Corona De Vries, who hails from the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, wrote to the Forrest Gump actor after he and his wife, Rita Wilson, spent over two weeks in quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.
"I heard on the news you and your wife had caught the coronavirus," Channel 7 News reported. "Are you ok?" He went onto say that while he loves his name, people at school had taken to calling him the coronavirus, which made him "sad and angry".
Watch as Chet Hanks speaks about his parents' coronavirus diagnosis:
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"Your letter made my wife and I feel so wonderful!" Hanks replied in a letter typed on the same Corona typewriter that he had taken to the Gold Coast. "You know, you are the only person I've ever known to have the name Corona - like the ring around the sun, a crown."
"I thought this typewriter would suit you. Ask a grown up how it works. And use it to write me back," he continued, per an image of the letter that was aired by Channel 7 News.
Hanks handwrote at the end,"P.S. You got a friend in ME!" - referencing the famous line said by his character, Woody, in Toy Story.
