Anna Fortunato, a 90-year-old survivor of COVID-19, has a message for the rest of us: Do not be afraid. Do not despair. “Keep on fighting, have that positive attitude, and pray,” she says. “And get out of bed. Don’t stay in bed all the time. ... And I want to say to them, ‘If I did it, you can do it.’”

That she is here to advise others is something of a surprise to Fortunato herself. “In the hospital, they said I was a miracle,” said the Long Island woman, a daughter of Italian immigrants born the year the stock market crashed. “Maybe I was. But I worked at it, let me tell you something.”