COVID-19 Recovery: Government Issues New Guidelines for Discharging Patients; check details

In all cases, patients must remain isolated for at least seven days, even after discharge.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has developed some revised guidelines to discharge patients from health centers. According to the government, the discharge policy (revised) is in sync with the guidelines on 3-tier COVID-19 facilities in India. It is also aligned with the category to which the patient belongs, depending on the severity of his case, read the notice of the Ministry of Health. There are mainly three categories (mild to severe) into which the government has divided all patients with coronavirus and will be discharged accordingly. In all cases, patients must remain isolated for at least seven days, even after discharge.

Discharge criteria for patients with coronavirus:

• Mild / Very Mild / Pre-symptomatic Cases: According to government notification, patients in a COVID Care Center will undergo regular temperature monitoring and pulse oximetry. The patient can be discharged after 10 days (considering from the day the symptoms appeared) if he did not have a fever for 3 days. It should be noted that before the download, the COVID-19 (RT-PCR) test will not be performed. The government further reported that before discharge, if patients witness a decrease in oxygen saturation (below 95 percent), they will be transferred to a dedicated COVID Health Center (DCHC).
• Moderate cases admitted to DCHC (oxygen beds): In this case, the criteria fall into two categories. In both categories, an RT-PCR test will not be performed before discharge.

1. One is for patients whose fever resolves in 3 days. In accordance with the guidelines of the Ministry of Health, those whose fever resolves in 3 days and have maintained an oxygen saturation above 95% for a minimum of 4 days will be discharged from the facility. The discharge will be performed 10 days after the onset of symptoms after checking that the dyspnea has resolved, that there is no fever without antipyretics and that the patient does not need oxygen.
2. Another case is when the patient demands oxygen and the fever does not resolve in 3 days. In this case, discharge will only be administered after clinical symptoms resolve and the patient can maintain oxygen saturation for 3 consecutive days.

• Severe cases: in cases where the Coronavirus infection is severe or the patient has some type of problem that compromises his immunity such as HIV, malignancy, or is a transplant recipient, discharge will be administered after complete clinical recovery. In this case, the patient will undergo an RT-PCR test and will be discharged when the patient gives a negative result.