A New York City sanitation worker who contracted COVID-19 in 2020 was finally released from the Friedwald Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing in New City Thursday.

Nick Bauso, of the Bronx, was greeted with applause from more than 50 sanitation workers and the commissioner.

Bauso was among the first to contact COVID-19 and ended up in the ICU. He then spent the next three years learning how to eat, talk and walk again.

Although he's happy to be going home, he says leaving the nursing home is bittersweet.

"They've become my family, all these people," says Bauso. "They took care of me, so well it's hard to leave."