Savannah Guthrie Leaves TODAY Show Broadcast After Positive Covid-19 Test

Yesterday, meaning Tuesday, co-host Savannah Guthrie was on TODAY, meaning the TODAY Show on NBC. However, before the rest of TODAY yesterday, she tested positive for Covid-19 and thus had to leave TODAY so that after 7:30 am ET, she no longer appeared on TODAY yesterday, meaning February 28. This also means that the next day—meaning today—she will not be on TODAY, since she’ll be isolating herself from everyone else by significantly longer than a day due to her having Covid-19. Got all that?

Yep, yesterday, February 28, at the end of the TODAY show’s 8 am ET hour, Sheinelle Jones offered the following update: “By the way, it has been an interesting morning for us. As we said, Savannah left early, she wasn’t feeling great, so she took a Covid test.” Jones continued by saying, “It came back positive. So, as soon as we found out, she rushed home to rest up. So Savannah, we love you, wishing you a speedy recovery.”

The following TODAY show tweet included a video clip of Jones making the announcement alongside Al Roker and Carson Daly:

Actually make than “alonger-side” for Roker. As you can see, while Jones spoke, Roker progressively moved to the left of the screen. This prompted Daly to ask Rokery, “Where are you going? Where you headed?” To that, Roker responded, “Luckily Sheinelle was sitting between me and Savannah.”

Of course, having Jones in between Guthrie and him may not have really protected Roker all that much. Sure it could have meant that Roker was a little further away from Guthrie, potentially at least six feet or one Gosling (because Ryan Gosling is about six feet tall) apart. That could have helped avoid the larger droplets from reaching Roker. However, it wouldn’t have helped too much against any possible aerosol transmission. It’s not as if Jones would have sucked all of the virus from the air before it could have reached Roker. Inviting your friends to inhale deeply while around you is probably not going to clear the air of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). That’s not going to be anywhere as effective as wearing a good quality face mask and having good air filtration and purification.

The other thing that you can do is to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Guthrie, who is 51 years of age, has already been fully vaccinated against Covid-19. She has also gotten a booster shot on top of that. Additionally, she tested positive for Covid-19 two times in 2022, in January 2022 and May 2022 too. All of this shows that getting vaccinated against Covid-19, recovering from a SARS-CoV-2 infection, or both does not mean that you can’t get infected with the virus again. And again. And again. So if you want to reduce your risk of getting infected, wearing a good quality face mask can help. As I have covered before for Forbes, multiple scientific studies have shown that good quality face masks like N95 respirators, can be a relatively simple way of reducing the transmission of the virus, even though some politicians have been making it seem like wearing a face mask is like being in an iron maiden.

Guthrie’s TODAY show co-host Hoda Kotb has been missing from TODAY since Monday. It’s not clear why Kotb has been been off of TODAY for two days and whether this has anything to do with Covid-19. Time will tell if Kotb will return to TODAY today, tomorrow, or the next day.