Introduction
Since
the outbreak in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),
caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
has given rise to a worldwide pandemic(Li et al., 2020). As of December
13, 2020, 70 million COVID-19 cases and 1.6 million deaths have been
reported globally(WHO, 2020). At the same time, tens of millions of
patients with COVID-19 have recovered and been discharged from the
hospital.
However, some patients affected by COVID-19 who fully met the criteria
for discontinuation of quarantine had another positive real-time reverse
transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) result at a follow-up
visit(An et al., 2020; F. Hu et al., 2020; Lan et al., 2020; Mei et al.,
2020; Su et al., 2020; Zheng et al., 2020), which increases the
complexity of disease control and has attracted widespread concern.
Several studies, mainly case reports, have been performed to investigate
the
clinical
characteristics and virologic course of discharged patients(An et al.,
2020; F. Hu et al., 2020; Lan et al., 2020; Mei et al., 2020; Su et al.,
2020; Zheng et al., 2020). However, to date, many questions about
patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 again (hereafter, positive
retest patients) have not been answered; these questions include the
overall prognosis of patients with
COVID-19
after
meeting the criteria for hospital discharge, the potential risk factors
associated with
redetectable
positive test results, and whether the persistent presence of virus
fragments means that the discharged patient is still contagious. As the
number of discharged patients increases, effective management becomes
critical to successfully reducing the spread of SARS-CoV-2. To promote
the comprehensive rehabilitation of COVID-19 patients, China has
implemented a series of measures for discharged COVID-19 patients,
including management of quarantine, regular follow-up, health
monitoring, and rehabilitation therapy, which provide empirical
information and evidence support for the management of patients with
COVID-19(National_Health_Commission_of_China, 2020).
In this retrospective cohort study,
we examined the potential risk
factors associated with redetectable positive test results among
745
patients affected by COVID-19 after meeting the criteria for hospital
discharge in Guangzhou, China.