Bob Odenkirk has details his son’s two-week battle with coronavirus, saying “his throat hurt like it had cancer”.

The Better Call Saul actor said his 21-year-old son Nate, who is asthmatic, became unwell while at DePaul University in Chicago.

“His roommate was sick. Really, really sick,” Odenkirk told CBS presenter Conan O’Brien.

“My son had asthma for many years. Very bad. A lot of times that goes away around 18 or so, but… even at 20… I think he still uses his inhaler sometimes.

“I met him at the airport, and I gave him a mask and he washed his hands with antibacterial soap and all that stuff. He woke up the next morning with a fever, and he said his throat hurt like it had cancer. He said it really hurt.”

Odenkirk confessed he didn’t fully understand the severity of his son’s symptoms at first. “We’re just so used to the flu,” he said, “and our brains just naturally go, ‘I’ve been through it. I get it. Three days. Two, three days that are hard, and then you get better.’ It’s not that. It’s much worse.

“Two weeks in, I’m looking at him, I’m going, ‘You’re good now, right?’ And he’s like, ‘No, no. I’m not good.’”

Odenkirk also told James Corden’s The Late Late Show that his son’s illness “got scarier the longer it went, and the further we got from it, I became aware that we got very lucky”.