The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Thursday unveiled new guidelines for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, which will quicken their discharge from isolation and treatment centres.
Under the new guidelines, which provide that a negative test will no longer be required to discharge a patient, symptomatic ones will be discharged at least 10 days after symptoms onset and at least three days without symptoms.
For asymptomatic patients, they will be allowed to go home 14 days after their first positive test.
The release of the guidelines coincided with a further rise in COVID-19 cases in the country, with 350 new incidences recorded to bring to 11,516 the number of confirmed cases in the country. The nation also recorded eight COVID-19 related deaths, raising the tally from 315 to 323 in the last 24 hours.
Announcing thursday, the NCDC said Lagos recorded 102 new cases, Ogun 34, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) 29, Borno 26, Kaduna 23, Rivers 2, Ebonyi 17, Kwara 16, Katsina 14, Edo, Delta, Kano and Bauchi 10 each, Bayelsa nine, Imo eight, Plateau four, Ondo three, Nasarawa two, while Gombe and Oyo recorded one each.
It said: “Nigeria has recorded 11,516 cases of COVID-19. 3,535 persons have been discharged, while 323 have unfortunately died.”
The guidelines were announced as Nigeria has joined the United Kingdom and other countries of the world to initiate moves on raising funds in support of research efforts to produce vaccines for the treatment of the virus.
Speaking yesterday in Abuja during the media briefing by the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, the Director-General of NCDC, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, said the centre had revised the COVID-19 case management guidelines in line with recent recommendations of the WHO.
He said that NCDC held a review meeting with various case management teams in the Ministry of Health and came up with new guidelines for discharging the patients.
He explained: “There has been new science emerging about the duration of infectivity of individual patients. It led to the WHO issuing new clinical guidelines.
“We then convened colleagues across our organisation, the department of hospital services of the Federal Ministry of Health, as well as other colleagues with whom we work, to review our guidelines and issue new guidelines for the country and of course adapting it to local circumstances.
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