At 106 years old Don Juan has a lot of stories to tell, and now surviving the coronavirus pandemic is one of them. 

On Tuesday the man who was born two months before the start of World War I was released from a hospital in Querétaro to return home, coronavirus-free.  

Don Juan, who is three years older than Mexico’s constitution and lived through the Spanish flu pandemic, was born in Castillo, Guanajuato, on May 2, 1914, in the middle of the Mexican Revolution and before the discovery of penicillin.

He met and married Sebastiana Parra, with whom he had five children.

For a time he worked in a soap factory, and sold cleaning products from his home. He also worked as a taxi driver when gasoline cost only 1 peso per liter and ran a nixtamal mill with his wife.

Don Juan (his surname wasn’t given) joins a select group of centenarians who have recovered from the coronavirus, including María Branyas, the oldest woman in Spain. She celebrated her 113th birthday in May and has kicked both the coronavirus and the Spanish flu in her lifetime. 

On April 14, a 106-year-old great-grandmother in Birmingham, England, recovered from the disease after being ill for three weeks and was applauded by nurses and doctors when she was discharged from the hospital. 

In Mexico, seven out of 10 people aged 100 or over who have been infected with the coronavirus have survived, despite having the highest comorbidity for the disease worldwide: advanced age.

As of last month, 72 centenarians in Mexico had been infected with the virus, and 22 had died according to the Ministry of Health. In infected patients who are between 80 and 90 years old, the mortality rate is higher, at 43.4%.

The oldest person in Mexico who has survived the coronavirus is thought to be a 116-year-old man in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, who was not hospitalized during his illness despite presenting comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension.

Source: Excélsior (sp)