Newsreader apologises after mistakenly reporting that a man who recovered from coronavirus had died

A newsreader in the United States has apologised after he claimed that a man who had recovered from coronavirus had died of the disease.

The gaffe occurred on ABC7 and featured newsreader Bill Ritter reporting on the story of 26-year-old Jack Allard, a two-time All American lacrosse player who had made a remarkable recovery from Covid-19 after being placed into a medically induced coma.

Ritter reported:

After spending time on a ventilator and five full weeks in the hospital, the governor announced that Jack has died.

Immediately after Ritter had said this he would have realised his mistake as the station then played a clip New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy paying tribute to Allard who had made a full recovery and had been discharged from hospital.

It was a long month, but slowly Jack rebounded. Last Thursday he was clapped out by the doctors and nurses who saved his life.

The anchor realising his mistake apologised for what he had just said and explained that he had 'misread everything'.

I  feel horrible. Jack is very much alive. Jack, we love you. Jack is alive and back home. He has come home, not in the figurative sense, but in the quite literal sense.

My deepest apologies for that; I was just … misread everything and I apologise but he is alive and we are grateful for that.

Unfortunately for Ritter, his mistake did not go unnoticed and reactions to this embarrassing error were soon all over Twitter.

New Jersey is the second-worst affected state in the US after New York, with more than 92,000 confirmed cases which have resulted in a reported 4,753 deaths.