NEW DELHI: The sharp spike in Covid-19 cases in the city will “plateau” after 10 days or so, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain has said, and asserted that home isolation policy has proved a “game changer” in taming the surge, a strategy the city government will continue to pursue.
The minister said there was no need to panic, and added that “the current situation is far better than in June” when the city witnessed a big wave of infections.
“One of the main reasons why we are seeing such a rise in the number of fresh cases is because we are testing aggressively. We have been conducting tests in markets, crowded places, mohalla clinics, hospitals, and many other places. The scale of testing per day has been almost quadrupled than what was in June,” Jain said, saying that Delhi is doing more tests per million people than any other state.
The total number of tests done till September 7 in Delhi stands at 18,03,466, and the number of tests done per million was 94,919, according to the Delhi health department.
“There is a spike in the number of cases, but the fact is that we have also increased the scale of testing as we don’t want to leave even a single person who has been infected untraced, including asymptomatic ones. This spike will come down in the next 10-15 days, and cases will sort of plateau and stabilise by then,” Jain asserted.
The Delhi health minister emphasised that the “testing, tracing, isolation and treatment” strategy was still being vigorously followed along with the “aggressive contact tracing.”
When asked about the most effective strategy of the government that helped contain the spike, he said, “home isolation was our biggest strategy, and it proved to be a game changer. We are on the right course, and will continue to pursue the strategy for effective Covid management.”