Coronavirus patients will be discharged after COVID-19 antigen test

Thiruvananthapuram : Coronavirus continues to plague our nation and the cases continue to rise rapidly. The healthcare system across the globe is slowly getting overloaded due to a large number of COVID-19 cases. The high risk of contracting coronavirus along with the high number of patients who require intensive care can turn everyone's lives into an absolute mess and chaos.

This is why the government has put together a standard operating procedure (SOP) to treat coronavirus patients and with regards to their discharge and everything involved. This is done because it's very important to be careful while discharging coronavirus patients because any mistakes could lead to this virus spreading further. As per the SOP in Thiruvananthapuram people were discharged only after getting an RT-PCR test result. Earlier the patients were tested from the 7th day of being hospitalised until they reported two negative results for back to back with just a 24-hour interval and then the SOP was changed which allowed patients to be discharged after just one negative test. But the new SOP states that people are to be discharged after just an antigen test result.

This move was made because the healthcare system is overloaded and the RT-PCR test results take longer as the cases continue to rise but the antigen test results can be obtained within 30 minutes which allows the healthcare workers to discharge patients after they know that the patients have recovered or are in recovery. The antigen test help determines if your body has developed antibodies against coronavirus or not.