In a post in the CNN, Kay Jones and Amanda Jackson write in a brief profile of Tillie Dybing, a 107-year-old Minnesota woman, who lives at Ecumen Detroit Lakes community home, survived from COVID-19 infection after she was diagnosed with the virus this fall. According to the her profile, Tillie Dybing was born in 1913 and was 5-year-old when 1918 flu pandemic hit her family in North Dakota.

Recalling 1918 flu pandemic Tillie told CNN “My folks got sick and they were in bed, and I’d run into the bed and my Dad said, ‘Can’t you find another place to run’”.

“Nothing in her lungs. They said she doesn’t have a fever. She just slept all the time.”

Tillie’s daughter Susan Berke (source: CNN)

“Throughout her life, Dybing endured other losses, including the deaths of several siblings in infancy and her husband in her 80s. She is also a cancer survivor, having beaten uterine cancer at the age of 95,” write the CNN.

Highest Cases and Deaths in US

According to the Johns Hopkins University database, US reported confirmed 247,357 new Covid-19 infections and 3,656 new deaths on Wednesday. “As of December 16, 113,069 patients are hospitalized with Covid-19 — the highest number of hospitalizations seen across the US since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest data from the COVID Tracking Project,” writes the CNN.

Health experts say that Thanksgiving gatherings contributed to the recent upticks in cases, hospitalizations and deaths, a warning as other holidays approach. 

From The Hill

MN Reports Highest COVID-19 Deaths

The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) reported 92 deaths on Wednesday, a third-highest single-day record during the pandemic. “Of the people whose deaths were announced Wednesday, three were over 100 years old, 18 were in their 90s, 39 were in their 80s, 20 were in their 70s, nine were in their 60s, two were in their 50s and one was in their 40s. Fifty-four of the 92 people whose deaths announced Wednesday were residents of long-term care facilities,” writes Greta Kaul of MinnPost.

“The seven-day case positivity average, which lags by a week, is 10.4 percent, down from 13.1 percent a week prior. The most recent data available show304 Minnesotans are hospitalized in intensive care with COVID-19, down from a peak of 399 in early December; 973 are in the hospital with COVID-19 not in intensive care.”