COVID-19 patients who have recovered and been discharged from hospital will not infect other people, experts said.

A cured coronavirus patient waves goodbye to medical workers on the bus while leaving the Wuchang temporary hospital in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, March 10, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Yuguo)

The fact they have recovered means that their immune systems have eliminated the virus, so people should not discriminate against discharged patients, said Huang Bo, a professor at Peking Union Medical College, who is also vice president of the Chinese society for immunology.

Huang’s view was echoed by Wang Jing, a chief physician at the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital.

Cured coronavirus patients who have been discharged from hospital will be held under quarantine for medical observation, Wang said, adding that when subsequent visits by medical institutions confirm that their health indicators are normal and they can therefore be graduated out of medical observation, they will not infect other people.

In addition, recovered mild cases will not suffer from lung complications, Wang noted.

Noting that some patients discharged from hospital have gone on to test positive for the coronavirus, Wang said they may not have fully recovered, and that the phenomenon was rare.

Doctors will closely follow their health conditions until a negative nucleic acid test result is reported several times, she noted.

Over 58,000 COVID-19 patients out of more than 80,000 confirmed cases have recovered and been discharged from hospitals, data from the National Health Commission showed on March 10.