ELDERLY persons and those with pre-existing health conditions are considered the most at-risk members of society during the Covid-19 pandemic, and even the medically-fit middle-aged are classed as 'vulnerable': The immune system weakens past age 60, but for those in their 80s or 90s, the danger is even greater. At least, sometimes; at others, the wartime generation has proven itself more physically resilient than anyone ever suspected.
Lugo's Lucas Augusti University Hospital (HULA) says it has just discharged a 101-year-old lady who has completely recovered from the virus and is now at home building up her strength again.
Galicia's regional health authority says she is the oldest person in the province of Lugo to have beaten the virus, and she left hospital yesterday (Wednesday) to resounding applause from the staff who attended to her day and night during her stay.
And, naturally, they had the national 'lockdown anthem', Resistiré, by Dúo Dinámico, playing in the background.
Just three weeks earlier, it was reported that a woman aged 101 and a man of 98 – from the Pyrénéen province of Huesca and from Sevilla in the south respectively – had been cured of Covid-19 and were now back at home with a smile on their faces.
On the date the Galicia centenarian was discharged, her province had 614 active cases of Coronavirus infection, but very few of them were in a critical condition – only seven were still in intensive care at the time, of whom five were in the HULA and another two in the A Mariña Public Hospital.
A further 28 were on wards as at yesterday, being treated but not considered to be in a serious condition, in the HULA, A Mariña and the Virxe dos Ollos Grandes Hospital in Lugo city, whilst the province's other district hospital, the Monforte de Lemos, had no Covid-19 patients whatsoever.
A total of 579 in the province who had the virus up to yesterday were considered well enough to remain at home, and so far, 125 patients have been discharged from hospital.
Although the national death toll from Covid-19 has been consistently about 10% of those diagnosed and the cure rate between a third and a half, in Lugo, 26 people have died out of the current total of 739 patients who have caught the virus so far this year.
The above photograph is a screen shot from a video made by staff at the HULA hospital, and which was published the same day on the Twitter page for provincial newspaper El Progreso de Lugo.
