Close contact tracing and management
If the discharged patient was diagnosed as a positive retest patient,
close contacts should be traced and followed up. Close contacts are to
be put under centralized quarantine and medical observation. If this is
not feasible, home quarantine and health monitoring can be used instead.
At home, they were recommended to wear a mask, live in a well-ventilated
single room, reduce close contact with family members, wash hands
frequently and avoid going out(Chinese_CDC, 2020). The quarantine
period should last until 14 days after the last contact without
effective protection with a positive retest patient. Samples including
nasopharyngeal and anal swabs were all collected for RT-PCR diagnosis in
an attempt to reduce the chance of false negatives caused by differences
in primer specificity and sensitivity. Monitoring and evaluating close
contacts were documented in a previous study(Luo, Liu, Liao, et al.,
2020).