F1 champion Niki Lauda has left the Vienna AKH hospital after he was admitted for the second time due to illness while celebrating New Year.
After a successful lung transplant in August, Lauda had left the hospital by October to start his rehabilitation process with the aim to return to F1 in his Mercedes non-executive role by the start of the 2019 season.
With his rehab on, Lauda flew into Ibiza – his second home – to spend Christmas and New Year with his family. But it was reported that he caught with Influenza A when holidaying there and had to be moved back to Vienna by the first week of January.
His immune system is still not strong enough to fight off the flu, for which he was admitted back at Vienna’s AKH hospital where he was placed under intensive care, being looked over by the same doctors who had performed the transplant.
The doctors did not want to take a risk and kept him in the hospital until Wednesday when he was released as per the report on Austria’s OE24 publication. Vienna AKH’s head of the Clinical Department of Thoracic Surgery, Walter Klepetko, provided the information.
Under normal situation, there wasn’t a need of a prolonged hospital stay but Lauda’s condition is sensitive which requires extra care. Klepetko, however, revealed that the Austrian did not require the help of artificial respiration this time around.
Incidentally, this is the second time that Lauda has taken ill in Ibiza. The first time when the situation got critical, he was holidaying with his family and the second time, he had been in his recovery process when he was infected with influenza.