Many Covid patients admitted to private hospitals are reluctant to go home even if they are fit unless a test confirms they don’t have the virus anymore, doctors and officials said on Friday.

Some hospitals said they had to refuse admission to patients testing positive for Covid-19 and having moderate symptoms because patients whose symptoms had disappeared and were fit to be discharged were refusing to go home.

Fears of being stigmatised by neighbours because of not testing negative for Covid-19 before discharge and spreading the virus to family members are the reasons why these people are refusing early release from hospitals.

The Bengal government had in May revised the discharge policy for a Covid patient.

Earlier, a patient had to test negative twice for being considered safe for discharge. The tests would be conducted usually a week after admission or when the symptoms would subside.

In the revised policy, a patient with mild symptoms can be discharged three days after the symptoms subside. A patient with moderate symptoms can be discharged 10 days after admission.

According to doctors, a person has to stay in isolation for 17 days, at hospitals or home, after testing positive for Covid-19. If the patient is discharged 10 days after admission, he or she has to stay in home isolation for the remaining seven days.

“Around 20 per cent patients at our Salt Lake and Dhakuria units can be discharged as they don’t have symptoms for three days. But they are refusing to leave,” said Rupak Barua, Group CEO, AMRI Hospitals.

“These patients are telling doctors either they don’t have isolation facilities at home or they are fearing protests from neighbours. Our doctors are counselling them.”

Barua said the hospital could not admit new Covid cases because of the reluctance of these patients to go home.

All hospitals have to upload on the health department’s portal the number of vacant beds every day.

On Friday, AMRI Salt Lake, which has 61 beds, showed only two vacant beds. The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences has 27 beds for Covid patients. On Friday, it had no vacant bed.

“There are about 10 patients who have no symptoms and can go home but despite doctors’ advice, they are pleading to stay at the hospital. We cannot force them out,” said R. Venkatesh, director, eastern region, Narayana Health, which runs RN Tagore hospital.

He said the group had already applied for licence to run a satellite facility where asymptomatic patients could be kept.

Ajoy Krishna Sarkar, a critical care specialist and pulmonologist who is treating several Covid patients at Peerless Hospital, said he was getting such requests regularly from patients who were fit to be discharged.

“Insurance agencies have said they won’t cover the additional days’ stay for a patient for whom the doctor has already written the discharge advice. When we are saying this to patients, some are agreeing to leave.”

A couple got admitted under him after testing positive for Covid-19. “The wife is scheduled to be discharged on Saturday and the husband on Monday. But the husband wants his wife to stay till Monday. They are saying there is only one toilet at their flat, which they have to share with their daughter who does not have Covid,” he said.