Bon Jovi keyboard player David Bryan, 58, exclusively told NATIONAL FILE that he took Hydroxychloroquine after he was diagnosed with Coronavirus, and his condition is improving.
“I’m on Day 23,” David Bryan told NATIONAL FILE. Bryan, who lives in New Jersey, wrote the musical Diana, on the life of the late Princess of Wales, which was doing well in previews but its Broadway debut at the Longacre Theatre is now postponed due to the virus.
“Three weeks ago Sunday, I was in New York working on my Diana musical…and then they shut down Broadway. I was fine Thursday, Friday, Saturday then on Sunday it hit me. I thought I had a flu. 101 degree fever, chills and body aches. I went into bed and was sweating like crazy and it was a nasty flu, but my wife was making sure I had soup and water. By Wednesday it seemed to get into my lungs. I was coughing stuff up. I called up my doctor Dr. Mike Rothberg, and he tested me for Corona. Then on Saturday he said you’re quarantined you have it.”
“He’s a very good doctor, and very astute doctor. He said I’m going to start you on (anti-bacterial) Zithromax and hydroxychloroquine,” Bryan said. Bryan noted that his wife also had Coronavirus but was asymptomatic. Bryan began taking 2 hydroxychloroquine pills per day plus a pill of Zithromax.
“I just started taking that drug combo including hydroxychloroquine. I’ve taken it before because I’ve played in more than 160 countries with Bon Jovi, so you take it before you go to a country with malaria. I took it. I was a pre-med student at Rutgers,” Bryan said.
Without saying conclusively without a control that hydroxychloroquine helped him, he said that it definitely did not hurt, and his situation has improved.
“The fever stopped, then it went a few nights of no fever” but with continuing night sweats, Bryan said.
“I’m still really tired. I had some zinc and was taking that as well,” Bryan said.
“Here I am, three and a half week later. I still have a little bit of a headache. Yesterday was the first day where my headache went to half, then today it went to a quarter. Tomorrow it will probably be down to an eighth,” Bryan said.
Bryan expressed sadness that his friend Adam Schlesinger, the Fountains of Wayne singer, is now dead from Coronavirus. Bryan said that his friend, Broadway actor Nick Cordero, is on a ventilor with Coronavirus, but “they gave (hydroxychloroquine/Chloroquine) to him through his feeding tube and his vitals are turning around.”
Bryan said that he is “apolitical” but watches every White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing as well as briefings by Governors Cuomo and Murphy and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio.
“I think I was patient zero for Coronavirus. I got it and I immediately went on Instagram and I got the virus and everybody has so much fear. Fear overcomes knowledge. People just didn’t know. The range is either you have no symptoms and you have symptoms or you die,” Bryan said.
Bryan found inspiration in Princess Diana, subject of his musical, who he says was “the first woman to go into an AIDS ward and shook hands and calmed people down.”
Bryan said Diana will open on Broadway “when the world goes back to play.” He is hopeful that Coronavirus can raise the alarm to put more attention on virus science and disease research.
“Roses grow out of shit. We’re in shit right now, but I think there will be a rose out of this,” Bryan said.
