ABC/Suhaimi Abdulla(NEW YORK) — Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos has tested positive for COVID-19.
Stephanopoulos announced his diagnosis Monday on GMA, nearly two weeks after his wife, actress and author Ali Wentworth, confirmed she tested positive for the virus.
Stephanopoulos, who shares two daughters with Wentworth, has been his wife’s caregiver throughout her illness. Wentworth self-isolated in a room in the family’s New York home to try to avoid spreading the virus.
Stephanopoulos said it was “no surprise” that he tested positive for COVID-19, and revealed that, unlike Wentworth, he has been asymptomatic.
“I’ve never had a fever, never had chills, never had a headache, never had a cough, never had shortness of breath,” he said. “I’m feeling great.”
As many as one in four people in the U.S. may have COVID-19 and not show any symptoms, according to estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent, said that new data from Iceland shows that as many as 50% of people who are infected with COVID-19 show no symptoms at all.
“That is part of why it’s so difficult to contain this virus,” she said Monday on GMA. “We have to remember this virus is just about four months old so literally we’re learning things about the way it behaves and the way it transmits and causes disease every day.”
Researchers are also still learning more about why the virus strikes some people more harshly than others, as was the case with Stephanopoulos and Wentworth, according to Ashton.
“…When we say about 80% of the cases are mild, that doesn’t mean pleasant,” Ashton added. “Ali’s [Wentworth] case clinically was defined as mild because she didn’t need hospitalization but it certainly wasn’t pleasant.”
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