Don Wilkerson, co-founder of the Teen Challenge youth movement, says that coronavirus left him barely able to walk or talk.
The pastor, who founded the youth movement with his late brother, David Wilkerson, told CBN News that he came down with coronavirus after visiting the organisation's Brooklyn chapter last month.
"I got pneumonia, I could hardly walk, or talk," he said.
After being tested at hospital, he was sent home with Tylenol to treat his fever, but a week later, he was rushed to hospital when his condition took a turn for the worst.
When his doctors offered him the experimental drug hydroxychloroquine, he agreed to take it.
He was over the moon when he woke up the next day feeling much better and able to taste again.
"I started to cry and I called my wife Cynthia, and I said, 'Honey I can taste, I can taste,' three times I said 'I can taste.' I was like a little kid and I knew at that point...that the medicine had worked on the virus," Wilkerson said.
He has since been allowed to return home.
Hydroxychloroquine is a drug normally used to treat malaria and lupus, and has been touted by US President Donald Trump as a possible treatment for coronavirus.
It has been trialled in countries around the world, including the UK, in the fight against Covid-19, although experts are still unsure about its effectiveness.
The US is grappling with the biggest outbreak of coronavirus in the world, with nearly three quarters of a million confirmed cases as of Sunday.
