Patients to be discharged without insisting that they test negative in antigen test
With the increasing number of patients in the second wave of COVID threatening to breach the health system’s surge capacity, the State government has taken a long-pending decision to discharge COVID-19 patients from hospitals without insisting that they test negative in a rapid antigen test.
In the initial days of COVID, a patient could be discharged from hospital only after he tested negative in two consecutive RT-PCR tests between a fixed interval.
But in June last, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) revised its guidelines that patients with mild/moderate disease could be discharged after 10 days of symptom onset if there was no fever for three days, without a COVID test.
Somehow, the State which seemed to look up to the ICMR for everything else, continued to insist on a negative antigen test on the 10th day, prior to discharge.
Even though all clinicians as well as the expert…