World War II vet beats COVID, marks 104th birthday

An Alabama man who spent World War II repairing bomb-damaged trains in France recovered from a fight with COVID-19 in time to mark his 104th birthday on Thursday.

Major Wooten was physically drained and a little fuzzy mentally after battling the new coronavirus but appears to be on the mend, said granddaughter Holley Wooten McDonald.

Video shot by Huntsville, Alabama TV station WAAY-TV shows Wooten wearing a face mask and waving while medical staff sang “Happy birthday dear Pop Pop” as he was discharged in a wheelchair on Tuesday, two days before his actual birthday.

McDonald said her grandfather, who served as a private first class in the Army before going on to a postwar career with U.S. Steel in Birmingham, tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 23 after her mother - his daughter - got the illness.

“I don’t know if that medicine just started working … but within 24 hours he was better,” she said. Wooten's blood oxygen levels are good now and his lungs are ”clear as a bell," McDonald said.

She said her mother recovered from COVID-19, and so did a sister who developed the illness and had to spend a week on a ventilator.

He received an infusion of the newly approved monoclonal antibody therapy bamlanivimab but was physically drained the next day and had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance the day before Thanksgiving, she said.

(Image credit: AP)