Wuhan doctor whose skin turned black due to Covid-19 treatment dies after spending five months in hospital
A Chinese doctor who saw his skin turn dark after falling critically ill with Covid-19 died after fighting the novel coronavirus for several months, it has been reported.
Dr Hu Weifeng and Dr Yi Fan, both 42, had caught the virus while treating patients at the Wuhan Central Hospital in January and were initially taken to the Wuhan Pulmonary Hospital for treatment.
They were later transferred to Tongji Hospital's Zhongfa Xincheng branch, where Fan recovered following months of intensive care but Weifeng continued to struggle. The latter passed away at a hospital in Wuhan, formerly the epicenter of the outbreak, earlier this week, according to the Daily Mail.
Weifeng, a urologist, lost his life to complications caused by Covid-19 after battling the infection for nearly five months, insiders at the hospital told local media. The doctor is said to have suffered a stroke on April 22 and then a severe cerebral hemorrhage afterward. He had remained in intensive care since.
The 42-year-old and his colleague had previously hit headlines after their skin turned abnormally dark because of the treatments they had been receiving. Doctors said it was caused by hormonal imbalances after their livers had been damaged by the virus. Dr Li Shusheng, who had treated Weifeng, said that he, too, suspected the doctors' skin had turned dark due to a type of medicine they had received.
However, after Fan recovered, a spokesperson for the doctor revealed the darkening was caused not by hormonal imbalance, but by an antibiotic he had received while undergoing treatment.
Prof Duan Jun, the deputy director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine at China-Japan Friendship Hospital, whose team had helped treat Fan and Weifeng, subsequently confirmed they had given both of them Hu Polymyxin B as a last-resort antibiotic. He shared that the drug had caused hyper-pigmentation in the doctors' body but that the condition would slowly disappear as they recovered.
Fan had managed to fight off Covid-19 after doctors hooked him up to an ECMO machine. ECMO, which stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, involves pumping and oxygenation of the patient's blood outside the body so their hearts and lungs get a chance to rest. After he had regained the ability to speak in April, he had talked to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV from his hospital bed and revealed the struggles of a patient recovering from the coronavirus. "When I first gained consciousness, especially after I got to know about my condition, I felt scared. I had nightmares often," he said.
He had also expressed concern for his "comrade" Weifeng, who was struggling to recover from the infection. At the time, Weifeng had been in the hospital for more than 100 days and had similarly undergone ECMO therapy, but to little avail.
His doctor at the time, Li Shusheng, had said he was concerned for the urologist's mental health. "He could not stop talking to the doctors who came to check on him," he shared.
Fan and Weifeng were both colleagues with Li Wenliang, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist who also worked at the Wuhan Central Hospital and had tried to warn of an outbreak as early as in December. He went on to catch the virus and died early in February.