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.
David Tavella, the spokesman for the retirement home told Reuters, “We consider her to be cured. She is very calm and she is looking forward to celebrating her 117th birthday on Thursday.”
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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