Nearly a third of recovered COVID-19 patients end up in hospital within five months – and one in eight dies of complications from the disease, according to a report.
Researchers at Britain’s Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics found that of the 47,780 people who were released from hospital, 29.4 percent were readmitted within 140 days, the Telegraph reported.
Of the total, 12.3 percent succumbed to the disease, it added.
According to the report, many people with long-term consequences of the coronavirus develop heart problems, diabetes, and chronic liver and kidney disease.
“People seem to go home, have long-term effects, come back in and die. We see that nearly 30 percent has been readmitted, and that’s a lot of people. The numbers are so great, ”said study author Kamlesh Khunti.
“The message here is that we really need to prepare for a long COVID. It’s a daunting task to follow up on these patients and the NHS is really under pressure right now, but some sort of monitoring needs to be arranged, ”added Khunti, a professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at Leicester University.
The study – which Khunti described as the largest of people released from hospital after being admitted with COVID-19 – found that survivors were nearly 3 1/2 times more likely to be readmitted and die within 140 days than other outpatients.
Khunti said the researchers were surprised that many people were readmitted with a new diagnosis, adding that it was important to make sure people were receiving protective therapies, including statins and aspirin.
“We don’t know if it’s because COVID destroyed the beta cells that make insulin and you get type 1 diabetes, or whether it causes insulin resistance and you develop type 2, but we’re seeing these surprising new diagnoses of diabetes,” he said.
“We have seen studies in which survivors have undergone MRS scans and they have heart and liver problems,” added Khunti. “These people need urgent follow-up and the need to take things like aspirin and statins.”
The new study has been published on a pre-print server and has not yet been peer reviewed.
