Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) has reduced the period during which infected patients undergo Home-Based Care from 10 days to a minimum of seven days, after which a control Covid-19 test has to be made.

In the new guidelines, RBC indicated that only fully vaccinated people are allowed to undergo the seven-day isolation period once tested positive for Covid-19.

Close contacts with symptoms should be tested immediately while those without symptoms can get tested after three days, it highlighted.

Furthermore, it states that people who test positive after recovering from Covid-19, with a recovery certificate, are not requested to isolate.

A recovered person is a person who tests positive and undertakes 10 days of isolation but remains positive on PCR with CT values above 37 while negative on a rapid diagnostic test and does not have any Covid-19 symptoms.

According to RBC, the recovery certificate is valid for 90 days, however, it can be invalid in case of a new infection confirmed by positive rapid test or PCR test with low CT values.

Those intending to use the certificate provided by the ministry for travel purposes should consult the airline, transit countries and destination country if the certificate is allowed even if the RT-PCR test obtained before traveling was still positive for Covid-19, it stated.

The new guidelines come in the wake of the highly transmissible Omicron variant but less severe for vaccinated people. In the past days, Rwanda recorded as high as more than 2000 positive cases within 24 hours.

On January 9, the Ministry of Health recorded 610 positive cases from 20,835 tests conducted, totalling 7,402 infected people within a week.

On the same day, five people were in critical condition and two people died.

People in Home-Based Care are advised to use separate household items from the rest and keep distance from close contacts as they take care of themselves with different activities and take a healthy diet.