One in three discharged Covid patients back on wards within five months
ONE IN EIGHT END UP DYING WITH VIRUS-RELATED PROBLEMS
MANY coronavirus “survivors” return to hospital and are dead within months, new research shows.
A study carried out by the University of Leicester and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that someone being discharged from hospital had a one-in-three chance of being readmitted within five months.
The team also found there was a one-in-eight chance of later dying from Covid-related health problems in hospital.
The numbers only include those people treated in hospital for Covid19 and not everyone who has the disease.
Also, the researchers looked at patients during the first wave of the pandemic when treatment was less effective.
WalesOnline reported that the study followed the progress of 47,780 people who were discharged from hospital last spring after their conditions improved.
It found that 14,047 of them were returned to hospital within 140 days and 5,877 of them later died Covidrelated deaths.
While the coronavirus infection can last just a few days, people report symptoms of the illness for months afterwards. The long-term effects of coronavirus can mean patients develop heart problems, as well as diabetes, liver and kidney conditions.
Study author Kamlesh Khunti, professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at Leicester, told the Daily Telegraph this was the “largest study of people discharged from hospital after being admitted with Covid”.
Professor Khunti said: “People seem to be going home, getting longterm effects, coming back in and dying.
“We see nearly 30 per cent have been readmitted, and that’s a lot of people. The numbers are so large.”
His warning comes after a study from China last week found that “long Covid” symptoms have been reported in one in 10 people - with symptoms apparent three or six months after they caught the virus.
The Leicester study has yet to be peer-reviewed and the alarming statistics are based on initial data. But Professor Khunti said he was surprised to find patients were returning to hospital with a different diagnosis and many had developed further complications.
He added: “We don’t know if it’s because Covid destroyed the beta cells which make insulin and you get
Type 1 diabetes, or whether it causes insulin resistance, and you develop Type 2, but we are seeing these surprising new diagnoses of diabetes.”
Responding to the study, Christina Pagel, director of the clinical operational research unit at University College London, tweeted: “This is such important work.
“Covid is about so much more than death. A significant burden of long-term illness after hospitalisation for Covid.”
Latest UK figures just published show deaths and hospital numbers were continuing to rise, but the number of new cases is dropping off, two weeks into the latest lockdown.
Sunday’s figures recorded 671 deaths, 37,475 people in hospital on average each day, and 38,598 new cases per day.