L-G rolls back on home isolation for 2nd time in a week

New Delhi: Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal was forced to roll back the modified orders on home isolation in Delhi for the second time in a week when after a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority here, he announced that the decision to have all COVID-19 patients mandatorily visit Covid Care Centres for their clinical assessment would be scrapped.

After the weeklong riff-raff between the Delhi government and the L-G's office here over the new rules on home isolation of COVID-19 patients, the guidelines have now essentially gone back to what they were before the Centre stepped in to work with the government here on a revised battle plan for the pandemic.

Covid-positive persons will not be required to visit Covid Care Centres for a clinical assessment for home isolation or hospitalisation, said Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia after the meeting on Thursday. Sisodia said those found COVID-19 positive would be clinically assessed by medical officers at their homes, which was the method that was followed by the Delhi government until a week ago. The only change to the guidelines, however, is that telephonic verification of patients has now been replaced with physical verification.

Last week, the L-G had issued orders scrapping home isolation altogether here. However, a day later, under pressure from the Delhi government and district officials, the order was modified to make all patients first visit isolation centres and then assess if they qualified for home quarantine. In the same order, the L-G had replaced telephonic verification with physical verification.

"We had requested the Central government to rethink this decision. It has approved our request and decided to roll it back to the older system of medical team visits at patient's homes," said Sisodia.