Eat an orange each day and count your blessings: 107-year-old Angela — Britain’s oldest Covid-19 survivor — reveals her secrets for a long life
- Angela Hutor lived through both World Wards and five respiratory pandemics
- She almost died from coronavirus in April but managed to pull through
- Mrs Hutor urges everyone to ‘keep calm’ like during previous pandemics
Britain’s oldest coronavirus survivor has revealed that her secrets to staying healthy are eating an orange a day and ‘counting your blessings’.
Angela Hutor, who turned 107 last week, has lived through both World Wars and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
She caught Covid-19 in April and almost died. Her daughter was called in her to say her final goodbyes during her stint in hospital.
But Mrs Hutor puts her survival down to counting her blessings and ‘a fresh orange every day — cut into quarters, not juiced’.
She added that she urges her family and friends to keep calm and occupied, and is adamant that Britain ‘will get through this’.
Mrs Hutor was born in Italy before she moved to Cannes in France and then London when she was eight years old.
While talking about the Spanish Flu pandemic, she said: ‘We just went on as usual. People went to work and carried on as best they could. Not like today, we just carried on. No masks.’
Britain’s oldest coronavirus survivor Angela Hutor (pictured with her birthday card from the Queen) has revealed that her tips to staying healthy are keeping clam and eating an orange a day
She caught coronavirus in April and almost died, but puts her survival down to counting her blessings and ‘a fresh orange every day – cut into quarters, not juiced’. Pictured is Mrs Hutor with her daughter Pauline
She told the Camden New Journal: ‘I’m not really worried about the current situation, I’ve had the virus.
‘But I think a depression will come from this – I’m afraid it’s going to be as bad as the 1930s.’
However, she added that she believes ‘we will get through this’ by learning not to be ‘flashy’.
The coronavirus survivor, who now lives in the Little Sisters of the Poor care home in Stoke Newington, recalled how she wasn’t allowed to help during WWII because she didn’t have a British passport.
As an Italian national she was classed an ‘enemy alien’ and had to tell the police if she changed address.
She said that officers all treated her politely and she ‘used to think that is the English way’.
Mrs Hutor met her husband Paul after WWII and they bought a house in Islington in the 1950s. Paul died in the 1990s but Mrs Hutor was able to live on her own until she was well into her 90s.
She moved into the Little Sisters of the Poor last year and came down with Covid-19 in April during the peak of the UK outbreak.
The sisters looking after her feared she would die as she was forced to depend on oxygen.
Her daughter, Pauline told the CNJ: ‘I was told it could be any minute. Considering mum’s age I had kind of prepared for it, but when I saw her she looked terrible – she was white as a sheet.
‘Then virtually the next day she started rallying round. I was getting updates and then on VE Day she was up with a glass of wine, waving a little flag… it was quite miraculous really’.