A Denver 18-year-old dies after contracting coronavirus for the second time.
What We Know:
- Wilber Portillo died after reinfection of coronavirus in November. In an interview with KDVR, Portillo’s girlfriend, Andrea Ferrel, stated, “He was just getting better. He had about a week of COVID-free before getting sick again.”
- According to PEOPLE, Portillo was a CEC Early College graduate. He launched an online sporting goods retailer called My Journey My Success. His first infection came after a business trip to Los Angeles. The second infection came after attending a party. Portillo tested negative between his two positive tests.
- Portillo tested positive for the virus two separate times. The first at the beginning of October and the second two days after his passing. He went to the doctor on November 18th and was told he had an intense lung infection. He passed the next day in his sleep.
- Ferrel said Portillo thought he was immune from the virus. “Just because you’re young, you aren’t immune to it, and even though we see more cases with older people and people with health conditions and even people without health conditions. It’s important that you stay home,” Ferrel said.
- The CDC has stated that reinfection is rare yet possible. The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, studied reinfection. The findings saw that the second infection had more severe symptoms than the first. However, the first person reinfected with the virus saw less severe symptoms in their reinfection.
A GoFundMe campaign was created and has since ended for Portillo. The page received 13,624 in donations.
