Bollywood superstar’s infection rocks India
When India’s biggest film star, Amitabh Bachchan, announced Saturday night that he had contracted the coronavirus, a loud alarm bell rang across India.
Bachchan, known as Big B, is not simply an enormously successful actor. He is one of India’s most revered figures. His face and rich, avuncular voice, dripping with gravitas, are everywhere, deployed in ads for household products, voice-overs at museums and countless public service campaigns. He was recently roped into doing a campaign on — what else? — the coronavirus.
The worry was that if Big B could catch the virus, anybody could, and with India getting walloped by COVID-19, Bachchan, 77, said on Twitter on Saturday, “All that have been in close proximity to me in the last 10 days are requested to please get themselves tested!”
India is racking up more new reported infections each day — about 30,000 — than any other country except the United States and Brazil, and it is rapidly catching up to Brazil. India now has the third-highest total cases after the United States and Brazil.
On Saturday night, Bachchan announced via Twitter — where he has 43.2 million followers — that he had tested positive. He was soon admitted to Nanavati Hospital, near the exclusive Juhu neighborhood in Mumbai where he lives, overlooking the Arabian Sea.
It appears that several of his family members have fallen sick as well.
His son, Abhishek Bachchan, also an actor, disclosed that he had contracted the coronavirus. Abhishek’s wife, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, an actress and model, tested positive, as did their 8-year-old daughter, Aaradhya.
All seemed to have mild symptoms, officials said.
The illness in the illustrious Bachchan clan was such big news that the health minister of Maharashtra state issued a Twitter post about it at 4:30 a.m. Sunday.
“I pray to God that Amitabh Bachchan Ji recovers from this soon,” the minister, Rajesh Tope, said, adding the respectful “Ji” to Bachchan’s name.