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A teenager in the UK has had the coronavirus twice but does not know it. Joseph Flavill has been in a coma since he was hit by a car on March 1 while walking in the city of Burton upon Trent, and he suffered a traumatic brain injury. That was three weeks before the country’s first pandemic was ruled out. Now that he’s starting to come out of the coma, his family is wrestling with how to tell him what’s happened since his accident, the Guardian reports. “I just do not know where to begin,” his aunt said, adding, “I have no idea how Joseph is going to understand what we all went through.” These include two attacks of the coronavirus for the 19-year-old who was caught while in a coma, from which he recovered. His family members try to explain to him by telephone that they want to be in his room, ‘hold his hands’, but not because of the pandemic. Only his mother could visit, fully covered with protective equipment.
When he got completely out of the coma in his room, his aunt said, “he’s not going to have any idea why he’s there.” The first sign of improvement came recently when the teenager smiled as he played an audio recording in an airplane’s cabin. He then winked at a Zoom call when another family member mentioned a pasta, the Cornish pastry, via CNN. “Did you intentionally cut?” she asked, and he blinked twice. Since then, he has moved his limbs and laughed at jokes. He was transferred from a hospital to a care center and will soon be able to receive a coronavirus vaccine. Among the events Flavill missed was receiving the Duke of Edinburgh Youth Award, a tribute to be held at Buckingham Palace last year. “If he comes out of this, life will not be as he knows it at all,” his aunt said. “How do you describe it?” (Read more coma stories.)