Retraction and republication: 6-month consequences of COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital: a cohort study

On Nov 24, 2022, The Lancet published an Expression of Concern¹ about the Article 6-month consequences of COVID-19 in patients discharged from hospital: a cohort study² by Chaolin Huang and colleagues, because of the substantive data correction request from the authors following comments from a reader, who was concerned about data and symptom questionnaire inconsistencies between this Article² and another Article, 1-year outcomes in hospital survivors with COVID-19: a longitudinal cohort study³ by Lixue Huang and colleagues. We commissioned a series of formal investigations into these alleged data inconsistencies.

First, we invited a Chinese statistical reviewer and the former statistical reviewer who provided a review of the original version of the Article by Chaolin Huang and colleagues² to review the corrected data and the reasons for doing so. Both reviewers agreed that the changes were realistic and reasonable. Second, we contacted a clinical reviewer who saw both Articles on the 6-month² and the 12-month³ follow-up to assess whether the symptom questionnaires used in the 6-month and 1-year follow-up visits were different. The clinical reviewer confirmed the differences between the two questionnaires were minimal and did not preclude the comparison of the proportion of COVID-19 survivors with symptoms at 6 months and 12 months. The Chinese versions of the questionnaires have also been reviewed by all the China editors of The Lancet Group, who came to a similar conclusion. Third, we asked the China–Japan Friendship Hospital, the institute of the corresponding author of the Article,² to assess the validity of the corrected data; the hospital organised a data review committee to go through the data and confirmed the corrected data were valid. Given these results, we invited a resubmission with the corrected data, and organised formal peer review of the fully revised paper with the corrected data by all the previous clinical reviewers and the statistical reviewer.

Following the retraction guidelines⁴ of The Committee on Publication Ethics, we have decided to retract the original published version of the Article and publish a corrected version using the retraction and republication process recommended in cases where substantive changes are required.