A cured COVID-19 patient talks with a medical worker at the "Wuhan Livingroom" makeshift hospital in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, Feb. 15, 2020. The first batch of 17 cured COVID-19 patients are discharged from the "Wuhan Livingroom" makeshift hospital on Saturday. (Photo by Gao Xiang/Xinhua)

Makeshift hospitals in Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, have decided to suspend the discharge of patients, after some recovered cases tested positive again for COVID-19.

A doctor who worked in a Fang Cang makeshift hospital in Dongxihu district in Wuhan told the Global Times on Thursday that the hospital has suspended discharges to ensure that patients will only leave after they fully recover. 

"The move won't last long," the doctor noted.  

Several such makeshift hospitals have carried out similar moves in order to prevent relapses among discharged patients, media outlet Jiemian.com reported on Thursday.  

A patient named Li Liang, 36, died during the 14-day quarantine period after testing negative twice and being discharged from a makeshift hospital, media outlet Caixin reported Thursday. The death reason was unclear.

Guo Yanhong, an official of China's National Health Commission, said earlier that some recovered patients in multiple provinces were found to have turned positive again in nucleic acid tests. 

But Guo stressed there is no evidence that such patients could infect others and some were negative again in subsequent tests.

To ensure patients are fully cured before leaving, the Fang Cang makeshift hospital in Jiang'an district issued an emergency notice on Wednesday, announcing that it will add blood tests and tests for viral antibodies ig-M and ig-G on patients meeting the current discharge criteria, The Paper reported. 

Whether to carry out the blood tests and tests for viral antibodies ig-M and ig-G at hospitals on a larger scale depends on whether being tested positive again is rare or not, Zhi Xiuyi, director of the Lung Cancer Center of Beijing United Family Hospital, told the Global Times on Thursday, noting that Li Liang's case could be an outlier.

To popularize the multiple tests is hard as the test kits and other related medical materials are limited, Zhi said.

If discharged patients test positive again, it doesn't indicate that they are infected again as the tests could be false negatives, which are common in such an emerging disease, Zhi said. 

The COVID-19 is new, so medical staff have not fully grasped the virus' complexity. Neither can they be sure if the virus itself has a high relapse rate after treatment, he noted. 

Zhi warned the public not to relax their vigilance and called on hospitals and patients to strictly follow the latest government manual.


Newspaper headline: Makeshift hospitals suspend discharges amid recovered patients testing positive again