A 36-year-old man, who was discharged from one of the makeshift hospitals built to contain the coronavirus outbreak, has died of respiratory failure in Wuhan, according to a report by a Shanghai-based news portal.
South China Morning Post quoted the news portal as reporting that Li Liang had been admitted to the hospital built to treat patients with mild and moderate symptoms on February 12, according to his wife, surnamed Mei. He was discharged two weeks later with instructions to stay in a quarantine hotel for 14 days.
Mei said her husband was not feeling well two days after leaving the hospital, with a dry mouth and gaseous stomach. On March 2, Li said he felt sick and was sent to a hospital, where he was later certified dead.
The death certificate issued by the Wuhan health commission said the direct cause was COVID-19, and listed respiratory blockage and failure as the symptoms which could have led to his death.
Since the death earlier this month, Fangcang Hospital — one of Wuhan’s makeshift facilities — has been issuing emergency notices saying that more discharged patients have been readmitting after falling ill again. The hospital is currently conducting antibody tests on all patients before discharging them, to ensure they are fully recovered.
Last month, Xinhua — the official state-run Chinese press agency — had reported that the country had discharged a total of 36,117 patients from hospitals after recovery.
The criteria for deciding if a patient has recovered varied between provinces, but in general, Chinese hospitals required people to test negative twice in a row, and to show no obvious symptoms such as a fever. Patients who were released were supposed to check in with their hospital and could face retesting — which was when some tested positive again.
The Current had also quoted a key Chinese respiratory disease expert as saying that some discharged coronavirus patients could still carry the virus and be infectious, potentially posing another complication to Beijing’s efforts to control the epidemic.
Zhao Jianping, the head of the coronavirus containment team in worst-affected Hubei province, had said a minority of patients who were discharged from hospital after tests showed they were negative for the virus later tested positive again. China counts patients whose throat or nose swabs show up positive for the virus in a nucleic acid test, and those whose CT scans show lesions in their lungs, as infected cases.
