Maria Branyas, a 113-year-old Spanish woman says she is in good health after having overcome infection by the new coronavirus.
She avoided developing severe COVID-19 symptoms and had her latest test come back negative. Her daughter told Spanish news agency EFE that her mother, who was born in the United States, tested positive for the virus in April.
“As far as my health, I feel good, with the little issues everyone has as we get older, but I feel fine,” Branyas told EFE this week from her nursing home where several residents have fallen ill and died from the new virus.
The centenarian was born on March 4, 1907 in San Francisco. During World War I, Branyas moved to Spain with her family on a boat and also lived through the Spanish flu pandemic that swept the world in 1918-’19. She also survived Spain’s 1936-’39 civil war.
Branyas recovered after a mild case of Covid-19. Her battle started shortly after her family visited her on March 4 to celebrate her 113th birthday, the spokeswoman said.
The family has not been able to visit in person since then. Branyas has lived for 18 years in her own private room at the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home, which is run by the Institute of the Order of San Jose of Gerona, affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, the spokeswoman said.
Although Branyas recovered from coronavirus, two residents of the same home died of it. The situation at the care home has since improved, said the spokeswoman.
Branyas still has memories of crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a boat during World War I, as she related to Catalan news agency ACN on her birthday in March.
“Because of the war, Germany was still attacking in the north, and there was no way of going through the Nordic seas, so you had to go further south, via Cuba and the Azores,” she said.
Despite her poor hearing and sight, Branyas said she was aware of the pandemic that has claimed over 27,000 lives in Spain.
“It is a tragedy,” she said, “since only a few people seem to know where it came from, how it got here and why.”
