Two 103-Year-Old Women Become The Oldest People To Beat Coronavirus

Two 103-year-old women have become the oldest people in the world to beat coronavirus and go home healthy.

103-year-old Zhuang Guangfen was discharged from a hospital in Wuhan, China after being diagnosed with COVID-19. She was only in the hospital for six days, according to Chutian Metropolis Daily. Wuhan is the city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, and it went into lockdown in late January after hundreds of cases popped up suddenly. The virus has infected over 80,700 people in China since then, per Newsweek. However, they are now past the peak, with cases on the decline every day. Wednesday was the country’s first day with no new locally-transmitted infections.

Another unidentified 103-year-old woman in Iran recovered after being hospitalized in the city of Semnan for about a week, per Agence France Presse. Navid Danayi, head of Semnan University of Medical Science, says the woman was “discharged after making a complete recovery.” Iran is the worst-affected country in the Middle East and the third most-affected country in the world, with 1,284 deaths from COVID-19 as of Thursday.

These two women aren’t the only centenarians to survive COVID-19, even though elderly people (above the age of 60) are more at risk of complications from the disease. A 100-year-old man in China also recovered from the virus after 13 days at the hospital, despite having Alzheimer’s, hypertension, and heart failure. A 91-year-old man in Iran with asthma and high blood pressure also survived, after just three days of illness.

Worldwide, there are now over 220,000 cases of coronavirus, including over 9,500 people in the United States. Over 82,000 people have recovered around the world, and the majority of those recoveries — 69,755 — have been in China. Iran has the second-most recoveries with over 5,300 people beating the disease so far. The majority of the other cases are still considered “open.”

The disease’s death rate is still not confirmed, as it varies from country to country. Early estimates hover around 2 percent to 3 percent. For people over 80, the death rate may be as high as 21.9 percent, the World Health Organization reported.

But that doesn’t mean individuals can’t beat the odds — and these two 103-year-old women are proof.