What happens after someone has recovered from COVID-19?

Almost half of COVID-19 patients have lasting health issues. What happens after someone has recovered from COVID-19?                       

* A new study documents the post-hospitalization health of people who developed COVID-19 in its first wave.                                                             

* The researchers found that nearly half of those who survived COVID-19 experienced lasting damage.                                                       

*   In addition, more than 40% of those left in poor health were never assessed for further treatment before discharge.     

All data and statistics are based on publicly available data at the time of publication. Some information may be out of date. Visit our coronavirus hub and follow our live updates page for the most recent information on the COVID-19 pandemic.                               

COVID-19 can affect trusted sources the long-term health of a person’s heart, brain, lungs, kidneys, and skin. It can also cause a host of lasting symptoms, referred to collectively as “long COVID.” For many, recovery from COVID-19’s acute phase is just the beginning of the story.                                                              

A new study had found that 45% of patients hospitalized and treated for COVID-19 were still experiencing related health issues when they were discharged.                                                                     

The study’s lead author, Dr. Alecia K. Daunter, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says, “Physicians and others in the healthcare system were working appropriately to discharge patients. The researcher explains why this happened so often during the pandemic’s early crisis stage:                        “[Doctors and hospitals] needed to keep patients safe while maximizing available beds and minimizing exposure to staff. I think that contributed to many people not being assessed by a therapist or [physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R)] physician.”                                       

The new study helmed by Dr. Daunter now appears in the journal.            

Not-quite recovery                                   

The study's authors analyzed the medical charts of 288 people hospitalized with COVID-19 at Michigan Medicine, the university’s health system, between March and April 2020, during the pandemic’s first wave.                                                               

Of the 45% of COVID-19 patients in worse shape after hospitalization than before, 40.6% were not assessed by a PM&R physician, physical therapist, occupational therapist, or speech and language pathologist before discharge. This suggests that post-COVID problems have been underreported, notes Dr. Daunter.     

Nonetheless, doctors referred 80% of these patients for post-discharge therapy. Durable medical equipment, such as wheelchairs, were necessary for 67.6% of the patients, and 26.7% had ongoing difficulty swallowing or dysphagia.

The unresolved health issues were so serious that almost 20% of the patients could no longer live independently after being discharged from the hospital.                

Dr. Daunter explains: “These patients may have needed to move to a subacute facility, or they might have needed to move in with a family member, but they were not able to go home. This has a massive impact on patients and their families — emotionally and physically.” Doing better in the future Medical News Today asked Dr. Daunter what steps should be taken before the next pandemic. She suggested:                           

Build collaborative relationships between rehabilitation and acute care medical teams to ensure that appropriate screening tools and referral pathways are in place, during and after hospitalization. Ensure that rehabilitation teams are appropriately staffed to provide optimal care in times of high capacity.                                  Create programs that address the functional decline in patients who have experienced a serious illness, and prioritize access to them in times of crisis.                                                         

Continue to research ways to prevent or mitigate the functional decline in hospitalized patients. Speaking with MNT, emergency physician Dr. Joseph Fraiman recalled the critical shortage of nurses during the early days of the pandemic.                                   

He would like to see the federal government develop a flex-staffing system similar to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA. This way, enough staff would be ready for rapid deployment in the event of another pandemic. Dr. Fraiman explained: “It would be ideal if you had a federal team of nurses.                                             

[…] You would have sent a bunch of them to New York, a bunch to New Orleans, a bunch to wherever [the disease] was raging.”