117-Year-Old French Nun Beats COVID-19 With No Complications
Sister André is also the oldest known living person in Europe and the second-oldest person in the world.
French nun Sister André, will celebrate her 117th birthday on Thursday, 11 February, days after recovering from the deadly COVID-19 disease, reports The New York Times. The nun’s condition was mostly asymptomatic and she faced no complications.
Born on 11 February 1904, she is now blind and confined to a wheelchair.
BBC reported quoting data from Gerontology Research Group’s (GRG) World Supercentenarian Rankings List that Sister André is the oldest known living person in Europe and the second-oldest person in the world.
She currently resides in Sainte Catherine Labouré, a retirement home located in Toulon, Southern France. It was recently swept by COVID-19 where 81 of its 88 residents became infected, out of whom 11 eventually died, according to The New York Times.
But Sister André is no stranger to beating the odds: she has survived two world wars, the 1918 flu pandemic and now the coronavirus, according to The Washington Post.
Sister André was isolated for weeks in her room and felt a bit off-colour but she blamed it on the virus and not on her age, Tavella said. A sociable and talkative person, she even enquired quite a few times about when she could start seeing people again and going for walks around the garden.
After most of France was affected by COVID-19 in 2020, the retirement home did not experience this surge in cases until January, but Sister André’s story provided much-needed upliftment to all the elderly in the nursing homes which have experienced a surge in cases.
( With inputs from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and BBC.)
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