Many Covid19-infected patients test positive for days after discharge

Tales of Covid-19 survivors continuing to test positive for the disease weeks after being discharged has created uncertainty about whether these can be added to the reinfection category.

Some survivors have been noted to continue to test positive for the disease for up to a month.

Among them is 36-year-old Krishna (name changed), who came down with the disease on September 19 and was hospitalised with symptoms such as fever, cold and intense body pain.

“However, a week later, with my condition under control, I was discharged from the private hospital where I was admitted,” he said, adding that he was not tested on the day of discharge.

Fifteen days later, however, anxious to rejoin his job and requiring a negative Covid certificate to do so, Krishna said he took a second round of RT-PCR and antigen tests. To his shock, he found that he tested positive for the disease.

Can such cases be added to the list of “reinfections”? The government says no.

Jawaid Akhtar, Additional Chief Secretary, Health, clarified: “Generally, it is believed that antibodies from a Covid-19 infection last for up to three months, so anyone who develops added symptoms or resurgence of symptoms during this period are likely not reinfections,” he said.

Dr Pratik Patil, an Infectious Disease consultant at Fortis Hospital who had documented what is likely the city’s first possible reinfection case in September added: “Any case of continued symptoms without a gap of two weeks is likely a long infection, not reinfection,” he said.

A key factor muddying the issue is the government’s policy to not test Covid-19 patients when they are discharged.

Noted epidemiologist Dr Giridhar Babu, said reversing this policy would not help.

“We know that people continue to shed the dead virus for as many as 20 days after being discharged. Subjecting a person to testing during this period will end in a positive result. So it is pointless to test at the time of discharge,” Dr Babu said.

He suggested that the solution lies in viral culture tests to confirm if a person had been truly cured of the disease, but added that such tests were difficult as well as expensive. “It involves growing the virus culture. It is time consuming and requires a BSL-3 level lab,” he said.