Details of revised home isolation guidelines by Union Health Ministry

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday revised the guidelines for home isolation keeping in mind the urgent need to ramp up coronavirus treatment, and has now included asymptomatic positive patients too on the list of mild or pre-symptomatic cases who can quarantine themselves at home.

In wake of the steady rise in Covid-19 cases in the country, however, the guidelines said that patients who were suffering from immune diseases (such as HIV, transplant recipients, cancer therapy) were not be eligible for home isolation.

Additionally, elderly patients who are aged above 60 years and those with comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung/liver/kidney diseases and cerebro-vascular diseases (the primary concerns for coronavirus) shall be allowed home isolation only after proper evaluation is done by a medical officer.

The patients who go into home isolation will be discharged after a period of 10 days since the onset of symptoms, with no fever for three consecutive days, the guidelines stressed.

The details of the new guidelines are given below: