Recovered, but test results come positive for months ›

Now we have many vacant beds, which helps the administration as they can give each patient more time and care. MADHAV SATHE, Former professor of microbiology at Nair Hospital

MUMBAI: While over 1.09 lakh Covid-19 patients have recovered and been discharged from various city hospitals, hundreds of others require hospitalisation for one month to four months as they continue to remain positive despite recovery, said Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials.

According to BMC, in many cases, patients having other health ailments have been hospitalised for over a month to four months until now. These patients are those who recover clinically but test positive despite the recovery.

BMC has attributed this prolonged positivity to the viral load of infection in the body that remains despite the patient recovering clinically. Such patients are not discharged until they test negative, considering they have other health ailments, which might complicate their condition.

For instance, BMC’S Sevenhills Hospital in Andheri, that is a dedicated Covid-19 hospital, has handled nearly 8,000 serious and complicated cases, according to officials. Of this, nearly 15% required hospitalisation for over a month. A discharge after 20-22 days of treatment is normal for discharging a patient from Sevenhills Hospital.

Dr Balkrishna Adsul, the dean of Sevenhills Hospital said, “We have been treating patients, who have comorbidities like kidney ailment or any other chronic disease. Till now, we have treated over 8,000 such patients, and around 15% have required over one month of hospitalisation. They are kept in the hospital for a long period because they tested positive despite recovering and showing no symptoms.” He added that there are multiple reasons behind not discharging patients who have been cured clinically but continue to test positive.as of Sunday, 110,059 patients have recovered and been discharged after Covid-19 treatment in Mumbai. The city’s recovery rate is 80.7%. On Sunday, Mumbai recorded 991 fresh cases and 34 new deaths, taking the city’s case tally to 136,353 and toll to 7,422. There are 18,567 active cases in Mumbai having fatality rate of 5.44%.

One hot spot that has shown signs of drastic improvement – Dharavi – recorded six new cases on Sunday, bringing the area’s case count to 2,711 of which 2,367 have been discharged.

Suresh Kakani, additional municipal commissioner said, “We are asking hospitals to not discharge certain patients who have serious health issues and test positive despite recovering. We do not want a situation wherein such a patient, despite being positive, goes home after which he or she develops complications.”

Meanwhile, Madhav Sathe, former professor of microbiology at Nair Hospital, said, “The reason for testing positive for a long period is probably because of a dead virus present in the body. Such a condition is observed in patients having other health ailments considering the clearance of virus from the body of such patients takes time.”