A Spanish doctor was struggling to cheer up his 79-year-old coronavirus patient. Pedro had tested positive for Covid-19 five times and had symptoms for 46 days.
The doctor contacted Twitter for help, seeking encouragement from all over for Pedro. "He is discouraged and ready to throw in the towel," wrote doctor Carlos Hernandez Teixidó on Tuesday. "Twitter, do your magic."
The response was immediate, comprehensive and overwhelming. He received 8,100 replies to his message alone, many more direct messages, more than 29,300 likes and he has been retweeted more than 7,900 times.
"I just spoke to Pedro and his daughter," Hernandez said on his Twitter account less than 24 hours after his first message. "You don't know how much the two were moved (sic). I gave her daughter the first 300 messages." The doctor added: "You are incredible!"
In total, Hernandez received more than 15,000 direct messages for Pedro, he told CNN on Thursday. "Not just messages, people sent photos, videos, some even played music to try to cheer him up."
"We decided to publish the tweet to try to get around fifteen people to send him a message to cheer him up," said Hernandez, admitting he was very surprised by the outpouring of support. "We posted it at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and at midnight we had 300 messages, including from Spanish celebrities."
The messages came not only from Spain, but from neighboring Portugal and other places in Europe as well as Latin America. For a while, the phrase "Hola Pedro" (or "Hello Pedro") has even become a hot topic on Twitter in Spain.
According to Hernandez, Pedro has several underlying conditions and spent about a month in the hospital after being diagnosed. His condition improved, but as the Covid-19 tests kept coming back positive, he had to continue his isolation at home, without seeing his wife or the rest of his family.
"I talked to him a bit today and he's in a very good mood," said Hernandez, explaining that for people in Pedro's situation, this type of support "is almost like providing treatment with a drug."
But the doctor added that if Pedro's health had improved, his last test - the sixth - also returned positive for Covid-19.
