Suspected positive patient dies five days after discharge from Tamil Nadu hospital

MADURAI: Five days after being discharged from Tenkasi Government Hospital, a 49-year-old suspected Covid-19 patient of Alwarkurichi in the district died on Thursday. K Raja Subramanian was admitted to the hospital on September 3 with fever symptoms and was treated for three days. The patient had to be readmitted to the GH on Tuesday as he again developed symptoms during his home quarantine. He was subsequently referred to Tirunelveli medical college hospital, where he died on Thursday morning.
Though the copy of the discharge summary issued by the Tenkasi GH showed him to have tested positive in an RT-PCR test, officials and doctors said the discharge sheet format was wrong and the man had tested negative and hence was discharged in three days. “The patient was admitted only to the severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) ward and he became asymptomatic within a day of treatment. He was only being given oral tablets by the third day, said a doctor from Tenkasi GH. “The patient had multiple co-morbidities including diabetes, hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). For the SARI ward, there is a printed format for discharge of Covid-19 patients which was wrongly used,” the doctor said.
Tenkasi district health officials later picked him up from his home and got him readmitted to the hospital on Tuesday after he developed symptoms again. As his condition worsened, he was referred to the Tirunelveli MCH. “After he was admitted here in a critical condition, the swab samples taken from him here returned negative for Covid-19. We treated him as best we could for SARI but he succumbed on Thursday as he had multiple co-morbid conditions,” said Tirunelveli MCH dean Dr M Ravichandran. According to the mortuary label from Tirunelveli MCH, the death was considered ‘Covid-19 suspect’.