NEW DELHI: Only seven of the total 691 deaths in the last fortnight in Delhi occurred in home isolation, a government study has shown, proving that the policy is working in reducing deaths. No death has occurred in home isolation in July till now. The findings announced by the government on Saturday point out that home isolation also helped in reducing burden on hospitals, in terms with bed capacity and other health infrastructure.
As per the study, the most crucial point in the treatment cycle of Covid-19 patients in Delhi, is testing facilities. Delhi currently is doing atleast 20,000 tests daily, but this was not the case until a few days ago. After the intervention from the Centre testing in Delhi increased exponentially, so did the number of cases.
“Difficulty in getting oneself tested in time led to death of some serious patients earlier. This has now been resolved with increased testing,” said the government statement.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has directed the health department to examine practices of hospitals which are reporting lower number of deaths to learn from them and improve other hospitals and overall system. Government will study functioning of each hospital in detail. According the report submitted by the health department, Delhi’s overall death rate has come down to 3.02% from 3.64% in June. However, daily average is roughly around 2.5% with average daily number of deaths being less than 50 and daily number of fresh cases being around 2000 since two weeks.
Slow admission process, has been identified as a “major bottleneck” in fight against the pandemic. The government decided last month to depute officials at the reception of hospitals to sort out the bed availability issues. Increasing number of beds and ICUs was identified as crucial steps taken by the Kejriwal government in the last two weeks in improving the health system. According to the Delhi government, augmenting the ambulance fleet has also played a crucial role in saving lives as it ensured timely transportation of patients to hospitals.The Delhi government, which has been saying that the recovery rate is above 70 percent among the best in country, said that situation is under control.