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– A teenager in the UK has had the coronavirus twice, but doesn’t know. Joseph Flavill has been in a coma since being hit by a car on March 1 while walking in the town of Burton upon Trent, suffering a traumatic brain injury. That was three weeks before the nation’s first pandemic. Now that he’s coming out of the coma, his family is struggling with how to tell him what’s happened since his accident, the Guardian reports. “I just don’t know where to start,” his aunt said, adding, “I have no idea how Joseph will come to understand what we’ve all been through.” That includes two coronavirus attacks for the 19-year-old caught in a coma, from which he has recovered. His relatives try to explain to him over the phone that they want to be in his room, “hold his hands,” but that is not possible because of the pandemic. Only his mother was able to visit him, completely covered in protective gear.
When he comes out of the coma completely in his room, his aunt says, “He won’t have a clue why he’s there.” The first sign of improvement came recently when the teenager smiled while playing an audio recording made in the cockpit of an airplane. Then he blinked on a Zoom call when another family member mentioned a pie, the Cornish pastry, per CNN. “Did you blink your eyes on purpose?” she asked, and he blinked twice. Since then he has moved his limbs and laughed at jokes. He has moved from a hospital to a care center and will soon be able to receive a coronavirus vaccine. One of the events Flavill missed was receiving the Duke of Edinburgh’s Youth Achievement Award, an honor scheduled for Buckingham Palace last May. “When he gets out of here, life won’t be at all as he knows it,” said his aunt. “How do you describe it?” (Read more coma stories.)