Ahana Chowdhury
22nd November 2020
101-year-old Mr P has survived the Spanish flu, WWII and now COVID- 19 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
A 101-year-old Italian man, publicly known as 'Mr P', has reportedly survived his battle with coronavirus.
Mr P, a resident of the coastal Italian city of Rimini, was admitted to the Rimini hospital Ospedale Infermi di Rimini after testing positive for COVID-19, but was declared cured soon afterwards.
In a country where tens of thousands have contracted the virus and thousands have lost their lives to it, this 101-year-old's survival story became a ray of light of hope amidst the darkness that surrounded the country and the world.
Born in 1919, Mr P had not just witnessed but also survived the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that had killed lakhs around the world and lived through WWII. At the time of his discharge, he was believed to be the oldest person to have survived coronavirus in Italy, according to a report by Xinhua.
In a televised interview, Gloria Lisi, Vice Mayor of Rimini said that Mr P's story became "the story everyone talked about" in the hospital. "Everyone saw hope for the future of all of us in the recovery of a person more than 100 years old," she mused.
Lisi further went on and added, "Every day we see the sad stories from these weeks that mechanically talk about a virus that rages and is especially aggressive on the elderly. But he survived. Mr P survived," she added, per News 18.
Mr P's survival is exceptional, especially taking into account the high fatality rates for senior Italians who contracted the virus. Nearly 86 per cent deaths in Italy constituted of patients over 70 years of age, according to reports by Italy's National Institute of Health.
Italy has also been one of the countries with the highest fatality rates, according to media reports. The age distribution of the Italian population may be a contributing factor in this, with 23 per cent of Italians being over the age of 65, as reported by Forbes.
In difficult times like these, it is stories like Mr P's that imbue humanity with hope.
(Sources: Forbes, News 18, The Hindu)
Edited by: Aditi Anilkumar