Chris Cuomo says he's 'depressed' from intensified fever during coronavirus fight

Chris Cuomo has been feeling "depressed" as he continues to fight a persistent fever and other symptoms of the coronavirus.

The CNN host gave his regular update on his condition to CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta during "Cuomo Prime Time" on Tuesday night, a day after showing the "scary" chest X-rays he underwent out of concern he may have pneumonia.

"I feel lousy because it's nighttime, and I'm a little depressed because yesterday and today, the fever came back with a little bit more gusto than it had in the past couple of days before that," Cuomo said.

Cuomo, 49, said he's endured almost a constant fever since revealing last week that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19.

"It's hard to have a fever for 20 hours a day,'' he said. "It just wears you down emotionally, and it makes you start to question things even though I know all the probabilities are on my side. I know I'm not dealing with metastatic cancer here, I get it, but the less knowns there are, and the longer it takes, you start to doubt."

He said he also can't help but worry a little bit when he sees stories about young people dying even though the illness is most dangerous for those over 60, according to health experts. Seeing reports like the 30-year-old baseball coach in New Jersey and the 25-year-old pharmacy tech in California who both died from the illness and were not believed to have had any underlying conditions has been unsettling.

"And you start seeing these stories that trickle out just often enough to freak you out,'' Cuomo said. "Holy cow, that guy was my age. Oh, she's in as good of shape as I am, she had no underlying symptoms. That kid's only 25, what happened? Dead in 50 hours, what happened?"

The younger brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has also detailed how he lost 13 pounds in three days at one point, chipped a tooth because he was shivering so hard from symptoms, and had a hallucination of his late father, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who died five years ago.

The uncertainty about the progression of the illness has also worn on Cuomo.

"They can't even tell somebody like me what course of symptoms I'm on and what duration it will be,'' he said. "I'm saying that the closer you get to the science on this, the more doubt there is.

"Nobody knows anything about how long this is gonna take except that you should expect long duration chronic illness — weeks."

Cuomo also shared on Twitter that he has been employing a breathing technique that may help people with COVID-19 symptoms.

Dr. Sarfaraz Munshi from Queen's Hospital in London has demonstrated the exercise in a YouTube video that's received almost 3 million views since Friday.

The technique aims to get the lower part of a person's lungs to expand so that any mucus that's collecting there can be dislodged and coughed out.

Cuomo has been performing the breathing exercise five times a day as he continues to battle symptoms.

"I'm doing better than I deserve, and I'm doing everything that I can, but it is a humbling, humbling process," he said.