The Issue of Recurrently Positive Patients Who Recovered From COVID-19 According to the Current Discharge Criteria: Investigation of Patients from Multiple Medical Institutions in Wuhan, China.

Abstract

The current discharge criteria for COVID-19 require that patients have two consecutive negative results for RT-PCR detection. Here, we observed that recurrently positive RT-PCR test results in patients with three consecutive negative results (3xNegRPos, 5.4%) were significantly decreased compared with those in patients with two consecutive negative results (2xNegRPos, 20.6%); such patients reported positive RT-PCR test results within 1 to 12 days after meeting the discharge criteria. These results confirmed that many recovered patients could show a positive RT-PCR test result, and most of these patients could be identified by an additional RT-PCR test prior to discharge.