Stahl Recovers from COVID-19

Veteran CBS anchor Lesley Stahl took the final couple of minutes of 60 Minutes Sunday night to reveal she had COVID-19, but was well now thanks to "a valiant army in scrubs and masks."

Stahl had reported a segment on the show about the double hit farmers had taken from the Trump Administration's trade war with China and then the pandemic.

But she followed that at the end of the show with a hit she had taken as well.

Stahl said one of the rules of journalism is don't become part of the story, but she said she had become one of the more than 1 million Americans who had.

She said she was not alone, and that another 60 Minutes co-worker had the virus--she did not identify them--with almost no symptoms, while another had almost every symptom imaginable. She appeared to be more on that scary end of the scale.

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She said that two weeks after being home, fighting pneumonia and fear, she was hospitalized and cared for by an overworked and "nearly overwhelmed" staff.

She said days later she was wheeled out to "a gauntlet of cheering medical workers," a "valiant army in scrubs and masks."

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She said she was well now. "Tonight we owe them our gratitude, our admiration, and in some cases, our lives."

She joins a recovering or recovered list of high-profile anchors including Chris Cuomo and George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos said he had tested positive for the antibodies and signed up for a clinical trial to donate plasma. CBS's New York operations were hit hard by the virus in March.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.