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The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announced new guidelines for the treatment and discharge of coronavirus patients in the country.
NCDC Director-General, Chikwe Ihekweazu, at Thursday’s briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, stated that COVID-19 patients who show no symptoms (asymptomatic patients) can be discharged 14 days after testing positive, while patients showing symptoms (symptomatic patients), may be discharged 10 days after showing symptoms and an additional three days without exhibiting symptoms of the disease.
Ihekweazu said the new guidelines was hinged on new science emerging about the duration of infectivity of individual patients.
He stated: “For symptomatic patients, they may now be discharged at least 10 days after symptoms onset and at least three days without symptoms.
“So, if you are symptomatic, you can be discharged if you had three days without symptoms in addition to at least 10 days of symptoms. Of course, if your symptoms last for longer, we will wait for longer while managing you supportively.
“If you are asymptomatic, you can be discharged 14 days after your first positive test. So, we no longer have to wait for a negative test to discharge. You can be discharged 14 days after your first positive with confidence that you can go home. You’re not at risk; you’re not putting your family or friends or anyone else at risk if you’re asymptomatic.
“These have come out of science and we’re confident of its impact. Change is difficult because we’ve been saying you have to have a negative test. So even though we publish these results, many physicians are still hesitating to use, but we can assure them, assure everyone managing cases that 14 days after, in fact, 10 days is what the evidence says, but we’ve added 14 days to make it a neat two weeks for people to then implement for these patients that are asymptomatic.”
According to data by NCDC, Thursday, Nigeria now has 11,516 cases of #COVID19Nigeria, 3,535 recoveries and 323 fatalities.
