Asymptomatic COVID-19 patients will, henceforth, be discharged 14 days after the initial positive test, Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, has said.
He said symptomatic patients “will do 14 days after testing positive and if you are without symptoms, you are discharged after three days without symptoms.”
The new guidelines for discharging COVID-19 patients were announced on Thursday, June 18, 2020, at a press briefing at the Ministry of Information.
The new guidelines, which are in tune with the recently-revised ones of the World Health Organisation, come into immediate effect.
According to Dr Kuma-Aboagye, once the patients “don’t pose any threat, you may now do your negative test at home and then come for a review.”
With the guidelines, he said: “Quite a significant number of people who still remain in our books because their lab results are not in, will now be discharged unless they have conditions.”
“We hope that will also allow us more time to focus on the new cases and be able to give more attention to those who are newly positive and then also create space in our facilities to take care of new cases,” Dr Kuma-Aboagye said.
Ghana’s COVID-19 caseload is now 12,929.
It follows the detection of 339 new cases.
So far, a total of 261,319 tests have been run.
The number of recoveries is 4,468 with 66 deaths.
The active cases are 8,395.
The country’s positivity rate is 4.95 per cent.
The new cases were recorded in 36 districts in eight of the 16 regions across the country.
Greater Accra Region, 154 from 17 districts.
Western Region, 58 from two districts.
Ashanti Region, 41 from five districts.
Central Region, 38 in one district.
Eastern Region, 15 in two districts.
Volta Region, three cases.
Bono East Region, nine in three districts.
Northern Region, nine in a district.
Savanna Region, two in a district.