Coronavirus: he was infected at 105 and his secret to beating him surprised everyone

NEW YORK – When someone asks Lucia DeClerck how she got to be 105, she answers without hesitation.

“Pray. Pray. Pray,” he said. “One step at a time. No junk food. “

However, regarding the coronavirus, he adds that his Survival may also be due to another essential part of his life: the nine gin-soaked raisins that he ate religiously every morning most of his life..

“I am filling a jar,” he explained. “Nine raisins a day after letting them sit for nine days.”

His children and grandchildren are familiar with this ritual, one of the many curious habits DeClerck has adopted throughout his life, such as drinking aloe juice straight from the container and brushing his teeth with baking soda (this strategy also worked for him: he didn’t have cavities until age 99, according to his relatives).

“We were just thinking, ‘Grandma, what are you doing? You’re a little crazy, ”said her 53-year-old granddaughter Shawn Laws O’Neil of Los Angeles. “Now we have to bite our tongue. He overcame all setbacks ”.

The list is long. Born in 1916 in Hawaii to parents in Guatemala and Spain, she survived the Spanish flu, two world wars and the deaths of three husbands and a son.

He moved to Wyoming, California and then back to Hawaii, before ending up in New Jersey, where he lived with his eldest son. After her 90th birthday, she moved to an elderly community in Manahawkin, NJ, on the Jersey Shore waterfront, where she remained active until she was injured in a fall there. about four years.

“It’s just the epitome of persistence,” O’Neil said. “His mind is the most lucid. Remember what happened when I was a kid that I can’t even remember.

DeClerck, the oldest occupant of her nursing home in south Jersey, learned she contracted the virus on her 105th birthday, January 25, a day after receiving the second dose of the vaccine. Pfizer-BioNTech, according to Michael Neiman, site director.

At first she said she was scared. She didn’t like being isolated, and she missed the daily talks with all the caregivers at Mystic Meadows Rehabilitation and Nursing, a 120-room residence in Little Egg Harbor.

Neiman reported that DeClerck had very few symptoms and that after two weeks he was back in his room, rosary in hand, sunglasses and knitted hat.

New nickname

Her two children who are still living, her five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren, who call her grandmother Lucia, gave her a new nickname, O’Neil said: “The 105-year-old champion who tore the covid apart.”

On January 22, Governor Phil Murphy spoke about her and a phone conversation they had during a coronavirus briefing. “It was a conversation that cheered me up,” said the governor.

DeClerck’s family gathered at Mystic Meadows to celebrate their 104th birthday in January 2020, before the pandemic broke. When they found out they had contracted the virus, they prepared for the worst.

“We were very worried,” said his son, Phillip Laws, 78.

“But his tenacity is incredible,” he added. “And bring this rosary all the time.”

The New York Times

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