Joseph Flavill doesn’t remember being tested positive for coronavirus last year – nor does he remember anything that happened in the last 11 months.
The 19-year-old British man has been in a coma since March 1, 2020, after suffering a brain injury when the student was hit by a car while walking on the street in his hometown, Staffordshire Live reported on Monday. It would be three weeks before the end of March before Britain entered its first national pandemic blockade.
“We also don’t know how much he understands what his accident was like before the first blockade, and it’s almost as if the whole pandemic was asleep,” Sally Flavill Smith, Joseph’s aunt, said in a statement.
Much of Flavill’s family was not allowed to see him in person due to pandemic safety restrictions at Adderley Green, a rehabilitation center where he was transferred after waking up at Leicester General Hospital, where he was imprisoned last year. .
“How do you explain the pandemic to someone who was in a coma?” asked Smith, whose nephew had tested positive for COVID-19 twice – once while unconscious and again during rehabilitation – and recovered.
“We try to keep it as simple as possible,” Smith told the Guardian. “We don’t have much time to go into a huge pandemic – we just don’t feel real, do we? When he actually has face-to-face contact, this will be an opportunity to actually try to explain to him what happened. ”
For now, the family is visiting Flavill via video calls, although in December she was given a short visit home to celebrate 19 years with her mother, Sharon Priestley – but wearing personal protective equipment and staying at a safe social distance.
Although far from fully recovered, Flavill’s motor and cognitive functions are slowly returning, Smith said. “We still have a long way to go, but the steps he has taken in the last three weeks have been absolutely incredible.”