On Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 3:31:32 AM UTC+8, David P. wrote:
> Born Lucile Randon on Feb. 11, 1904 (the year New York opened its first subway station), Sister André grew up in a Protestant family of six in the southern town of Alès. She worked as a governess in Paris and later converted to Roman Catholicism, baptized at the age of 26. She joined a charitable order about two decades later and took on her ecclesiastical title.
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> Sister André was assigned to a hospital in Vichy, where she cared for orphans and others for three decades.
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> She was known for her generosity, often aiding older people younger than herself. “Sister André was above all a profoundly good and endearing woman, dedicated to others,” Mr. Falco, the mayor, said.
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> Besides, she told reporters last year, “Work kept me alive.”
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> Sister André lived through the administrations of 18 French presidents and 10 popes and always had vivid memories of global events, including the two world wars, her relatives said. She said in interviews that she saw many French soldiers who fought in the Algerian war for independence, 1954-62, returning traumatized to the hospital where she worked.
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> “Since I came into this world, I have only seen wars and fights,” she said in an interview as she celebrated her 118th birthday.
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> Sister André also survived the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, which took the lives of some 50 million people worldwide.
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> Her surviving Covid-19 in early 2021 was an uplifting story during the coronavirus pandemic, when nursing homes were particularly at risk. Nearly all of the 88 residents of her facility became infected, and several died.
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> “It’s difficult to fathom that someone born before the patenting of plastic, zips or even bras was alive well into the 21st century, and robust enough to beat Covid-19,” Craig Glenday, the editor in chief of Guinness World Records, said in a statement.
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> https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/18/world/europe/sister-andre-worlds-oldest-person-118-france.html

In advanced age of 118, she can survive the Covid infection from nearly all of the infected residents in the nursing home was a big surprise to it. Hence, she lived so long was likely because she had good renewal DNA and disease-resistant genes, so to speak.