Coronavirus: Wuhan to quarantine all cured patients for another 14 days after some test positive again

South China Morning Post ^ | 02/23/2020 | He Huifeng

[SeekAndFind]

The authorities in Wuhan on Saturday introduced 14 days’ mandatory quarantine for recovered coronavirus patients, after some discharged patients again tested positive.

From Saturday, all patients who had recovered and been discharged had to be sent to designated places for two weeks of quarantine and medical observation, the city’s coronavirus treatment and control command centre said on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

Wuhan and the rest of Hubei province, of which it is the capital, have continued to account for the vast majority of confirmed coronavirus cases in mainland China, where about 77,000 have been infected and more than 2,400 have died.

The new quarantine arrangements came after Chinese medical experts on the front line of the battle to contain the outbreak warned that recovered patients may still carry the virus and be contagious.

Zhao Jianping, a doctor heading a team working in Hubei, said on Thursday that there had been cases in which patients tested positive after they had seemingly recovered.

“This is dangerous,” Zhao was quoted as saying by Southern People Weekly magazine. “Where do you put those patients? You cannot send them home, because they might infect others, but you cannot put them in hospital because resources are stretched.”

Xiang Nijuan, a Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention researcher, was on Friday quoted by state broadcaster CCTV as saying that monitoring of those who have had close contact with patients should be expanded to a wider pool of people, because some patients had been contagious two days before the onset of their own illness.

In the southwestern city of Chengdu, a patient initially discharged on February 10, after meeting the standard for having recovered, was readmitted to hospital nine days later when they tested positive again during a check-up.

[Don Corleone]

None of this, repeat none of this passes the smell test.

[blam]

Are the saying the 'cured' aren't cured or were these people reinfected from a 'fresh' source?

Did they ever really get well?

[Ken H]

Sounds like those birthday candles that relight.

[Rocky Mountain Gal]

Double whammy?

[DouglasKC]

If it’s true it’s scary. Doesn’t it mean that they were reinfected pretty rapidly?

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Are the saying the ‘cured’ aren’t cured or were these people reinfected from a ‘fresh’ source?

The term used by Johns Hopkins University, which tracks the official number of cases worldwide is RECOVERED.

Is RECOVERED = CURED? don’t know.

Does recovery act like a natural vaccine by which the immune system now recognized the virus and fights it? Don’t know.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Recovered may mean that the patient has mostly beaten the virus, but still sheds some particles. It’s apparently very contagious.

So, I can understand this precaution. Also, it will provide valuable additional information on the disease and public control of its spread.

I would think that being quarantined with recovered patients rather than potentially sick ones would be a heck of an improvement over either being in the hospital or the waiting purgatory of pre-disease quarantine.

[freeandfreezing]

They are concerned that recovered patients are still carrying and possibly shedding the virus. That isn't surprising, it happens with other infections as well.

It makes sense to keep the newly recovered patients out of the general population to avoid further spreading of the virus.

Also, modern testing is very sensitive to small quantities of the RNA they are searching for, so it is more likely that they are seeing continued presence of the virus now than in the past when that kind of testing was not available.

[momincombatboots]

First gen diagnostic tests are fraught with false positives, false negatives due to interfering substances.
If it is pcr, they will detect non viable and cant tell werher the syrain is replicating or not. Too bad the folks practicing medicine don’t understand the basics of the test.
Nice scare tactic to lay out there to terrify more people who think we are all gonna die from this one.

[DownInFlames]

Sounds like the human body cannot develop the antibodies for the virus. It’s perpetual. This being the case, we are royally screwed.

[RummyChick]

The second go around of this causes heart attacks

[null and void]

WHOA!!!! Didn't see that coming!

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[Jane Long]

Not good™

[BenLurkin]

Just d-mn

[Jane Long]

Sounds like those birthday candles that relight.

---

Yes. Kind of like that...only, when they re-light....they explode.

[dfwgator]

Spreading like wildfire in South Korea.

[Starcitizen]

You mean the ones that were not sent to the ovens already?

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

Oh geeesh. What a mess. Were the people even cured to begin with? Didn’t Xi say heads would roll if more cases turned up?

[DownInFlames]

Yes, obviously. Haven’t seen any undead yet.