102 Year-Old Woman Beat the 1918 Flu and Now Has Beat COVID --- TWICE!

When she was a baby, she lived through 1918 flu. Throughout her life she survived cancer, internal bleeding and sepsis. In April, she survived coronavirus -- a virus that has taken nearly 1.5 million lives worldwide.

And now, the 102-year-old New York resident just did it again. She survived a second coronavirus diagnosis, according to her daughter, Joanne Merola, who spoke to CNN affiliate WPIX.
"My invincible mother tested negative," Merola said.

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She's 102. She lived through the 1918 flu and now she's beat coronavirus — twice

Meet the101-year-old who was born on a ship during the 1918 flu pandemic and just beat coronavirus

By Mallory Hughes

Angelina Friedman celebrates her birthday.

(CNN)Angelina Friedman survived cancer, miscarriages, internal bleeding, sepsis and now not one, but two pandemics. More than 100 years after living through the 1918 influenza pandemic, the 101-year-old woman just beat coronavirus.

An administrator at the Mohegan Lake, New York, nursing home where Friedman lives said Friedman is back to her old self and celebrating life as if nothing ever happened.

"It also just goes to show how much the world needs hope that you can beat this at 101," Amy Elba told CNN.

Friedman's daughter, Joanne Merola, told CNN affiliate WPIX that her mother is a survivor.

"She and my dad had cancer at the same time. She survived. He didn't," she said.

After beating coronavirus at 101 years old, Friedman started looking for some yarn so she could knit

In 1918, Angelina Sciales (now Friedman) was born on a ship that was transporting immigrants from Italy to New York City. It was in the midst of the 1918 pandemic. It's not believed that the baby contracted the disease.

Her mother died giving birth, and her two sisters helped her survive until they could reunite with their father in New York, where they lived in Brooklyn, Merola told WPIX.

One of 11 children, Friedman is the last surviving.

"She is not human," Merola said. "She has superhuman DNA."

Now a resident of the North Westchester Restorative Therapy & Nursing Center, Friedman battled yet another pandemic.

"She had gone out to the hospital for a procedure and when she returned she had tested positive," Elba told CNN.

Merola told the affiliate her mother isolated in her room and ran a fever on and off for several weeks as she battled the coronavirus until April 20, when she tested negative.

Nurses called Merola and said Friedman was doing great. She was eating again and looking for yarn to crochet with, they told her.

"She is a mover and a shaker," Elba said. "She's a big knitter and she makes all kinds of things and gives them away to visitors."

The staff threw a big birthday party for Friedman's 101st birthday, and last year she was crowned prom queen.

Friedman was named Prom Queen at the nursing home.

Friedman was named Prom Queen at the nursing home.

"She's super active. You couldn't believe it for her age," Elba said. "Still doing her leisure activities probably that she's done forever."

Like many other facilities, Elba said, they have set up alternative means for patients to remain in contact with their families.

Due to a back injury, Merola hasn't been able to visit her mother since February, but she doesn't live far from home. Because her mother is nearly deaf, they can't speak on the phone.

As prom season approaches, Elba said that although the schools might not get a dance, Friedman is certainly going to have hers -- and hopes she will be named prom queen for the second year in a row.

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Meet the 101-year-old who was born on a ship during the 1918 flu pandemic and just beat coronavirus

101-Year-Old Man Who Survived 1918 Flu Beats Coronavirus, Too

His "family brought him home yesterday evening, to teach us that even at 101-years-old, the future has yet to be written."

by Foster Kamer

There are those who have been around the block, and then, there’s this guy: A 101-year-old Italian man has survived the 1918 flu, a World War, and now, the coronavirus. What’d you do today?

A patient known as “Mr. P” was admitted last week to Infirmi Hospital in Remini, Italy after testing positive for COVID-19. Mr. P was born in 1919, as the 1918 flu pandemic — which would go on to kill an estimated 600,000 Italians — was in full-swing. And on Wednesday night, 101 someodd years later, Mr. P was discharged from the hospital, and taken home by his family.

The Vice Mayor of Rimini, Gloria Lisi, provided a statement to local newspaper ReminiToday about the man. The (incredibly poetic) statement, roughly translated, reads:

“Given the progress of the virus, it could not even be called a ‘story like many’ if it were not for a detail that makes the life of the person returned to their loved ones truly extraordinary.

Mr. P., from Rimini, was born in 1919, in the midst of another tragic world pandemic. He saw everything, hunger, pain, progress, crisis and resurrections. Once over the 100-year-old barrier, fate has put this new challenge before him, invisible and terrible at the same time. Last week, Mr. P. was hospitalized at in Rimini after testing positive for COVID-19. In a few days, it became ‘history’ for doctors, nurses, and the rest of the healthcare personnel who treated him.

A hope for the future finds itself in the body of a person over a century old, as the sad chronicles of these weeks mechanically tell every day of a virus that is raging especially on the elderly.

Yet, Mr. P. made it. The family brought him home yesterday evening, to teach us that even at 101-years-old, the future has yet to be written.”

Per the Hopkins Map, as of this writing, Italy leads the world in COVID-19 infections resulting in death, and is likely to overtake China within the day for total confirmed infections. But their rate of infections continues to slow, and the country’s lockdown appears to be working. The reality of the math is brutal, but Mayor Lisi isn’t wrong: The future, as doubly evidenced, isn’t entirely bleak, and has very, very much yet to be written.

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101-Year-Old Man Who Survived 1918 Flu Beats Coronavirus, Too