101-Year-Old Man Who Beat Coronavirus Survived the Influenza Pandemic, Too

A 101-year-old man who survived World War II and the Spanish Flu pandemic that swept the world has beaten the coronavirus.

Identified only as "Mr. P," the resident of Rimini, Italy, was hospitalized last week after testing positive for COVID-19, according the city's deputy mayor Gloria Lisi. 

He was released from isolation Monday and became “the story everyone talked about”  at the medical facility, Lisi said. 

“Everyone saw hope for the future of all of us in the recovery of a person more than 100 years old,” Lisi said in a television interview. 

“Every day we see the sad stories from these weeks that mechanically tell about a virus that rages and is especially aggressive on the elderly. But he survived. Mr. P. survived,” she said.

He was born in 1919, in the middle of a global influenza pandemic that infected 500 million people, about one-third of the world's population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

The city of Rimini documented 1,189 new cases of coronavirus in one day last week, as the country passed 8,000 COVID-19 deaths.

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