Quarantine for discharged patients
After discharge from the hospital,
patients
were put under centralized quarantine and
health
monitoring for 14 days at designated health care facilities. During the
quarantine period, the discharged patients lived in a well-ventilated
single room, dined separately, practiced hand hygiene, and minimized
close contacts. Nasopharyngeal and anal specimens collected on the
1st, 7th, and 14thdays or more frequently were sent to the laboratory for RT-PCR testing.
The discharged patients were monitored for body temperature, and medical
staff recorded whether they had respiratory symptoms (such as fever and
dry cough) or digestive tract symptoms (such as diarrhea) every day. If
the RT-PCR test result was consecutively negative and no symptoms or CT
images progressed, these patients could return to normal life and be
regularly followed up by the community after the discontinuation of
quarantine. If they were symptomatic (had clinical manifestations and
had a positive RT-PCR test result) or asymptomatic (had no clinical
manifestations but had a positive RT-PCR test result) patients,
diagnosis and treatment should be conducted strictly in accordance with
Chinese
clinical guidance for COVID-19(National_Health_Commission_of_China,
2020 ). When the positive retest patients met the hospital discharge
criteria, they were quarantined for another 14 days.