Older patients discharged after COVID-19 infections face increased risks

A post-discharge risk for older adults with COVID-19 infections has been identified in a new study from Harvard Medical School, according to an Aug. 17 news release.

The study, published Aug. 9 in the British Medical Journal, found that the risk of death is twice as high for patients 65 and older who were hospitalized with COVID-19 infections and later discharged, than it was for older patients who were hospitalized with the flu and later discharged. 

For the study, researchers examined the outcomes from 1 million Medicare beneficiaries who had been admitted to hospitals with COVID-19 infections between March 2020 and August 2022 and compared that data with outcomes from 58,000 Medicare beneficiaries who were admitted to hospitals with flu cases between March 2018 and August 2019. 

“We know that patients who require hospital admission for COVID-19 have more comorbidities, more severe initial disease, and worse short-term outcomes compared with patients who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and they may be more vulnerable to late complications of infection,” Dhruv Kazi, MD, the co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine, at Harvard Medical School, said in the release.” Our goal was to better understand long-term outcomes after patients are discharged from the hospital so as to help tailor support strategies and guide resource allocation for future surges of COVID-19 or during future pandemics.”