#Man dies of COVID-19 long-term effects after hospital release: family

A United Kingdom man has died from what his family believes were the long-term effects of COVID-19 two months after he was released from the hospital.

Roehl Ribaya, 47, spent more than a month being treated for the virus in Blackpool Victoria Hospital’s intensive care unit, where he was placed on a ventilator, the Blackpool Gazette reported.

He was declared virus-free and moved to a rehabilitation ward before he was finally discharged home on Aug. 14, the outlet reported.

But despite Ribaya returning home, his family said he “never recovered” from the toll the illness had taken on his body.

“He was never the same. He was so breathless all the time,” his wife, Stella Ricio-Ribaya, told the newspaper.

She said he struggled to get up the stairs due to his breathing issues and had been “rushed back into hospital a number of times,” BBC reported.

He went into cardiac arrest Oct. 13 and was brought to the hospital, where he remained in a coma for two days before his death, according to the reports.

His wife said his cause of death was cardiac arrest and post-Covid pulmonary fibrosis, a condition in which the lung tissue becomes scarred making it difficult to breathe.

“It was long Covid,” she said, adding that he was “taken too soon.”