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Jack Allard, the Bates College alumnus who last month contracted COVID-19, remains hospitalized in Philadelphia.





According to a guest column published Tuesday in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the 25-year-old New Jersey resident remains in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator at The Hospital at the University of Philadelphia.

“Jack has finally shown some slight improvement, but he is hardly out of the woods,” wrote Nick Allard, Jack Allard’s uncle, who is the former dean and president of Brooklyn Law School.

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“Our prayers fly to Jack, his dad Andy, mom Genny, sister Kate and his love Michaela,” he said.

Ever since Jack Allard’s condition deteriorated during his initial stay at JFK Hospital in Edison, New Jersey, the Allard family has been fighting to gain approval for him to use an experimental drug, Remdesivir. It is the subject of some clinical trials to test its efficacy against COVID-19 symptoms.

Nick Allard wrote the column to point out the need for everyone to demonstrate caution and have awareness about the coronavirus pandemic and the way it has been handled.

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He said if Jack Allard, a former lacrosse All-America honorable at Bates, can become critically ill from COVID-19, it can happen to anyone.

“A robustly fit 25-year-old former All-American lacrosse player commuting to work in New York City, Jack was hospitalized Sunday, March 15 and remains in a medically induced coma,” Nick Allard wrote in the Brooklyn Gazette.

Allard’s mother, Genny Allard, previously reported that her son had been in good health and did not have any known issues that would have put him in a higher-risk category in terms of dealing with the coronavirus.

Nick Allard’s column also points out some of the challenges Jack Allard and his family have faced, both in trying to obtain initial testing, and then treatment, for him.

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“The confusion, red tape and mismanagement that delayed getting Jack tested, obtaining test results and blocking treatment options are almost certainly experienced by people everywhere in the country,” Nick Allard wrote.

His column also is highly critical about the way the federal, state and local governments have failed in handling the pandemic. He stresses the need for people to take precautions for themselves, family members and other people.

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