Chris Cuomo (Mike Segar/Reuters)

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on Monday night announced that he has emerged from his basement, where he has been quarantining after testing positive for coronavirus three weeks ago.

CNN published a segment featuring Cuomo’s reunion with his family, which occurred just a week after a public kerfuffle with a biker in the Hamptons, who confronted him about his failure to social distance.


Cuomo, 49, announced on March 31 that he had tested positive for the virus and was remaining isolated from his family in his basement, where he continued to host his CNN show and share updates with his viewers about his symptoms, which included hallucinations, sweating, headaches, and a fever that was so severe that his shivering caused him to chip a tooth. He said Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cleared him to end his quarantine period.

“Alright, here it is: The official re-entry from the basement,” he said in a video posted to CNN’s website and his Instagram account. “This is what I’ve been dreaming of, literally, for weeks.”

Cuomo said his wife, who also tested positive, has been cleared by the CDC as well. He thanked his children, especially his 17-year-old daughter Bella for helping out while their parents were sick.


“This is the dream, just to be back up here doing normal things,” he said. “Thank you for being so nice to me, thank you for taking care of everything you had to, thank you for taking care of me, and Bella, thank you for stepping up and now adding family videographer to your resume.”


The video comes after an ugly confrontation Cuomo reportedly had on Easter Sunday with a 65-year-old East Hampton man, who said he was riding his bike and noticed Cuomo outside with his wife, another woman, and three kids.

One of the women approached the man, identified as David in a New York Post report, and asked, “May I help you?”

David said he asked why Cuomo was not socially distancing from the others before the anchor approached and began shouting at him.

“He said, ‘Who the hell are you?! I can do what I want!’” David said. “He just ranted, screaming, ‘I’ll find out who you are!’”


“I said to him, ‘Your brother is the coronavirus czar, and you’re not even following his rules — unnecessary travel,’” said David, who added that he voted for Cuomo’s older brother, Andrew Cuomo, for governor of New York.


“He just began to boil more,” David said. “He said, ‘This is not the end of this. You’ll deal with this later. We will meet again.’ If that’s not a threat, I don’t know what is.”

The next day, Cuomo complained on his SiriusXM show about the confrontation.

“I don’t want some jackass, loser, fat-tire biker being able to pull over and get in my space and talk bulls–t to me, I don’t want to hear it,” Cuomo said on his radio show. “I want to be able to tell you to go to hell, to shut your mouth … I don’t get that doing what I do for a living: me being able to tell you to shut your mouth or I will do you the way you guys do each other.”

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