Idris Elba recently announced that he tested positive for the Coronavirus. The actor maintains that he’s asymptomatic but he’s concerned about his asthma.
The virus is said to attack the pulmonary system and the 47-year-old has been open about his struggles with asthma in the past.
“Yes, of course, I’m worried,” he said on the live stream Q&A. “I’m worried about having asthma and how that could make things complicated very quickly. I’m very worried about what’s happening in the world if I’m honest. I’ve very worried about how we’re dealing it. Part of speaking publicly about it part of me coping about how the world is dealing with it.”
In 2013, Idris Elba had an asthma attack on a plane and had to be removed. “It was the strangest thing to ever happen to me,” Elba later told a radio station in a past interview. “I’ve got asthma, I’ve always had asthma. And as soon as I sat on the plane, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. When asthma hits you your lungs, it feels like you’re in a bit of water and you’ve got this much air to breathe in and it keeps creeping up. That’s what asthma feels like… Asthma is one of those things if you’ve had it for a long time, if you don’t panic, you’ll be okay. But it was really shocking for me.”
His asthma was so bad growing up that he attended a special needs school for two years. “Yeah, that was a weird two years of my life,” Elba said of being sent to the school. “I was asthmatic, but I was fine as long as I wasn’t running around. But here I was at this amazing school that was full of kids with very severe disabilities, and kids who were just straight-up bad. I was chucked in the middle of that.”
Many Idris Elba fans were concerned about his wife, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, 30, who was next to him in his announcement and wasn’t tested for the virus at the time. But she “managed to get a test” and she’s doing fine Idris reassured.
“Just for clarification, Sabrina wanted to be by my side,” he said. “As much as we talked about her not coming to where I am, she did. She wanted to. I love her even more for it and I would do the same thing for her. Love is all you get, and who am I to turn down my wife’s support? As much as I want her to be safe, we calculated that risk and decided to be together.”
“I love Sabrina for standing by me and being in that video, it was the most important moment for me,” he added.
