Researchers Share Difficulties With Discharging Patients With Acute Psychiatric Needs From COVID-Specific Psychiatric Units

Psychiatric News (5/27) reports, “Patients with acute psychiatric needs who are COVID-19 positive can be safely cared for in a COVID-specific psychiatric unit, but determining when they can be discharged can be challenging, wrote Luming Li, M.D., and colleagues at the Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital in Psychiatric Services article in press.” The authors wrote, “Emerging evidence suggests that positive test[s] can endure for weeks after a person is no longer infectious. Although every patient required a COVID+ test … for admission, many patients continue to remain positive or have testing courses with a negative test, positive test, and then inconclusive test, making testing results difficult to interpret.”