PHOENIX (AP) — Seven months after he was first hospitalized with COVID-19, a utility worker from Las Cruces, New Mexico, has a brand new set of lungs.
Doctors at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, where the transplant took place, are expected to release 52-year-old Arthur Sanchez on Saturday. He is the first of two double lung transplants the hospital has performed on coronavirus patients since the pandemic began.
There have been reports of a handful of COVID patients nationwide who have received a lung transplant. Sanchez has called himself “a walking miracle." Doctors say he spent more than 115 days in various hospitals during his battle with the virus.