ABSTRACT
Background: Among many responsibilities, the doctors from the COVID war room of our institute were assigned to take telephonic follow-up of discharged COVID patients to provide any medical assistance if needed. During this process, few relatives of the patient’s informed back that the patients had died after discharge from the COVID wards. Aim and Objective: Such data of death in the COVID patients after discharged are limited in India; hence, we conducted this study so that more information is generated. Materials and Methods: Relatives of these COVID patients were asked about date and place of death. Other data including gender, age, date of admission, date of discharge, and requirement of oxygen were available with the COVID war room and were used for evaluation. Results: Out of the 892 COVID discharged patients (between August and October 2020) who could be contacted, 19 (2.13%) patients (6 females and 13 males) had died after discharge from the COVID ward. Characteristics of these 19 patients included higher age (n = 11 were 61–80 years old and n = 3 were >80 years old), hospital stay of 11–20 days (n = 12), and required oxygen support (n = 12). Most deaths occurred within 20 days (n = 16) after discharge from the COVID ward. Conclusions: The current study reports deaths occurring COVID patients after discharge. Most of these deaths occurred within 4 weeks of cure and in elderly patients. More research with long-term follow-up is needed in “cured” COVID-19 patients so that appropriate preventive measures can be undertaken in the future.