Woman Reported 'Dead' From COVID-19 Shows Up Alive 10 Days Later

The relatives of a woman who was reported to have died from COVID-19 were surprised to find her alive days after her supposed burial. There was apparently an identification mix-up that led to the mistake.

It was earlier in January when the family of 85-year-old Rogelia Blanco was notified that she died from COVID-19 on Jan. 13 and was scheduled to be buried the next day, Reuters reported, citing local newspaper La Voz de Galicia.

Blanco had been living at a care home in Xove, northern Spain but was transferred to another facility in December after testing positive for COVID-19. It was there that she and the other residents who tested positive were being treated. When it was reported that she had died from the disease, family members were unable to attend the funeral because of the current protocols in place.

But Blanco returned to the care home on Saturday, much to the surprise of her husband, the outlet said.

The foundation that runs the care home explained in a statement to the newspaper that there had been an identification mistake. Apparently, Blanco shared the room with another woman in the facility where the COVID-19-positive patients were transferred. It was the other patient, identified in another La Voz de Galicia story as 90-year-old Concepción Arias, who succumbed to the disease

"This is a one-off event, among the more than 100 transfers that have been made since last December to Os Gozos," the San Rosendo Foundation statement said, according to the newspaper.

Although this may be a joyous moment for Blanco's family, this is naturally devastating for Arias' family.

"They told me she had recovered," Arias' brother told La Voz de Galicia as per The Local. "But when I traveled to the care home to visit her I discovered that actually she had died ten days ago and been buried under another name."

This is not the first time that such a mix-up has happened amid the bustle of the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2020, a 74-year-old woman in Ecuador woke up from a comatose and asked to call her family weeks after they were informed that she had died from the coronavirus and was even given her "ashes," the BBC reported then.

Spain is among the countries hard-hit by the pandemic. To date, the country has reported over 2.5 million COVID-19 cases and 56,208 deaths, the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center noted.