Date Published: 22/10/2020
ARCHIVED - Longest-ingressed ICU covid patient in Spain dies a month after leaving hospital
ARCHIVED ARTICLE Ángel Mateos spent 172 days in intensive care with covid but has died a month later
He was hailed as a great fighter, his departure from intensive care after 172 days of severe illness a testimony to the capacity of humans to overcome covid and the tireless dedication of nursing staff to saving lives, but a month after leaving ICU, Ángel Mateos, the patient who had become the patient holding the record for the longest time spent in an ICU unit due to the coronavirus in Spain, has died.
Ángel had himself worked in the Igualada Hospital (Barcelona) as an auxiliary for more than 20 years, and was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital between March 16th and September 3rd, a total of 172 days.
The hospital itself reported on social media that he died this Wednesday, "More than an Angel, he was like a phoenix that resurfaced over and over again after all the complications” the head of the anesthesiology and intensive medicine department, Santi Abreu said in a tweet.
During his stay in the ICU, the health worker, who was admitted on Monday, March 16th at dawn with severe secondary respiratory failure that later led to bilateral pneumonia, presented multiple and very serious complications (coagulopathies, kidney failure requiring hemodialysis and sepsis due to respiratory and abdominal infection, amongst others), faced death many times, but he kept fighting, and knew he faced a long road to recovery, because the stay in the ICU had caused significant muscle wastage.
Doctors said at the time that he faced a long journey to recovery to re-educate his body and recover his strength with the daily and intense physical work that he had to carry out at the Guttmann Institute, where he was transferred when he left the Igualada Hospital.
Had he died in the the UK, his death would not have been included as a Covid statistic, falling outside of the designated period within which patients are diagnosed before their death is included in official statistics and his situation will ring true for tens of thousands of people around the world left severely debilitated by covid and still facing many months of pain and suffering as they attempt to recover from the virus.
Long covid is now being recognised for its debilitating long-term effects, and there is still a significant amount to be learned about the virus and its behaviour (and effects) as scientists make daily discoveries, with the weeks rolling by.
Yesterday Spain officially passed the 1 million contagions mark and today the Government is discussing further restrictive measures with the regional governments in a bid to try and halt the spread of the virus, as Spain struggles to overcome the second wave.
And Ángel becomes just another statistic, one of 34,366 fatalities reported to date in Spain and one of more than a million worldwide, a statistic so many people are still denying and attempting to dismiss as just a fantasy of the media and a virus that is “no worse than a mild dose of flu”. Incomprehensible. RIP.