'Most patients who recovered in Wuhan suffer lung damage'

Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China’s Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.
A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital’s ICU, has been conducting follow-up visits with 100 recovered patients since April. The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59. According to the first phase results, 90% of the patients’ lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.
Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from Beijing, was quoted as saying. The results also showed that antibodies against the coronavirus in 10% of the 100 patients have disappeared. “The results also revealed that the patients' immune systems are still recovering,” Peng said.