Longtime Fresno news anchor catches coronavirus: ‘It’s a real thing people’

Longtime ABC30 news anchor Liz Harrison posted on social media Tuesday that she has the coronavirus.

Harrison, who was not immediately available when contacted by The Bee, did not go into detail how or when she contracted COVID-19, or what symptoms she experienced that led her to get tested.

She only confirmed that she caught the highly contagious illness.

“So.... I don’t know how.... but I have contracted Covid 19,” Harrison wrote on her Facebook page, while keeping the privacy of her post visible to the public. “Yes... it’s a real thing people!”

Harrison was last on the air Monday.

Many of the news station’s on-air personalities have been broadcasting from home since mid March when the coronavirus pandemic outbreak started.

The Emmy-award winning Harrison, who has been in television news for close to 40 years, announced last month that she was leaving ABC30 on June 12.

“I am dropping the mic,” Harrison wrote on a social media post when she announced her departure. “I have had the most incredible career at ABC30 over the years. I started back in 1982. I looked like I was probably 12 years old.

“It’s a miracle they kept me that long.”

Harrison’s case of COVID-19 is the latest of a handful of hardships she’s had to endure.

Harrison battled breast cancer, which forced her to wear a wig on TV while her hair grew back following chemotherapy.

“I don’t hide what’s going on,” she said in May.

Harrison said she plans to write a book, which she’s been working on for more than 10 years, that chronicles her life as a journalist and the incidents in her personal life while in the public eye.

Fresno County, by the way, reported 32 new positive cases of the coronavirus Tuesday, bringing the county’s total to 1,914.

This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 9:55 PM.