Maria Branyas, ‘Spain’s oldest woman’, beats COVID-19 at 113

Maria Branyas, a 113-year-old believed to be the oldest woman in Spain, has recovered from COVID-19 after being diagnosed with the disease in March.

Branyas was said to have tested negative weeks after she suffered mild symptoms of the ailment, making her the oldest reported person in Spain, and possibly the world to survive COVID-19.

She was said to have tested positive for the disease and later got isolated at her care home in Olot, Catalonia, which has reported the deaths of several people suffering from the disease.

“Now that she is well, she is wonderful, she wants to speak, to explain, to make her reflections, it is her again,” BBC quoted the woman’s daughter to have said following her recovery.

Branyas was born in Mexico in 1907, but was said to have later moved north to San Francisco in the Catalan province of Girona during World War One with her Spanish journalist father.

She has raised three children, one of whom recently turned 86; has 11 grandchildren, the oldest of whom is said to be 60-year-old; and 13 great-grandchildren.

The case of Branyas, who has also lived through the flu pandemic of 1918 alongside the 1936-39 Spanish civil war, comes after a 106-year-old Spaniard also won the war against COVID-19.

Spain has been greatly hit by COVID-19 with nearly 27,000 deaths recorded from the disease so far as well as 269,520 confirmed cases, according to Worldometres.