A cured coronavirus patient donates plasma at Affiliated Nanhua Hospital of University of South China in Hengyang City, central China's Hunan Province, March 2, 2020. Two recovered patients donated their plasma after recovery from coronavirus in Hengyang City on Monday. (Photo by Luo Meng/Xinhua)

A makeshift hospital in Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, has decided to carry out additional virus antibody checks on patients who are about to be discharged, after some recovered cases tested positive again for COVID-19.

The Fang Cang makeshift hospital in Jiang'an District, Wuhan, issued an emergency notice on Wednesday, announcing that it will enhance health checks for recovered patients, including blood tests and tests for virus antibodies ig-M and ig-G, to ensure they are fully cured before leaving, the hospital told news portal The Paper. 

The rechecks will start from Thursday, and the results will be available in one day. It is still unclear whether other makeshift hospitals in Wuhan will follow suit.

The notice came after Wuhan's epidemic prevention and control authority's recent report of cases in which a number of recovered patients in multiple provinces were found to have turned positive again in nucleic acid tests and had to be sent back to the hospital. 

However, these patients did not infect others and some of them showed negative again on their retests, said an official from the National Health Commission at the State Council press conference last Friday. 

Zhang Zhan, deputy chief physician and associate professor of respiratory and critical care medicine at the People's Hospital of Wuhan University, suggested that recovered patients should be discharged after showing negative test results three times, as she found that 13 out of 18 patients who were ready to leave hospital had tested positive on their third nucleic acid test, according to an article she published on the hospital's WeChat account on Feb 24. 

According to the latest version of the government document for diagnosis and treatment of novel coronavirus pneumonia, patients can be discharged from the hospital if they show negative on a nucleic acid test two consecutive times.

Global Times