The Federal Government has disclosed that it may likely discharge positive patients earlier due to the capacity of the country's isolation and treatment centers.
It was further disclosed that, recovering patients will only undergo test once as against the earlier guideline on second testing before discharge to decongest isolation centres.
The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), disclosed thisu during the daily briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
He said,
“New evidence is emerging that even when the test is still positive, in certain circumstances, after that patient have been in care for a certain amount of time, it is possible and safe to discharge that patient to home isolation. So we are looking at the evidence and we might change our guidelines over time.
“I am sharing this so that we start preparing ourselves for some changes and the directions of how we are planning to go.
“On our discharge criteria, we changed it from two tests – 24 to 48 hours apart, to a single negative test. The reason is that most of our cases that tested negative also tested negative for the second time. Of course, there will be some exceptions, but in most cases when they test negative the first time, the second test is also negative.”
He added:
“Given the pressure we have on bed spaces especially in Lagos, Kano, and the FCT, we made a pragmatic decision to move to one negative test sufficient to discharge people.
“There will always be exceptions where it is not appropriate and of course it is dependent on your being clinically cleared of symptoms. So, if you are still symptomatic, then, this doesn’t apply to you.”
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