Delhi needs aggressive survey, screening: CM

New Delhi: In what may be considered a significant shift in Delhi's containment strategy for COVID-19, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday said that one of the key weapons needed in the Capital's armoury in the battle against the pandemic was to resort to aggressive screening and survey so that "maximum cases can be located"; showing that the Delhi government is now choosing to hunt down infections in the city to ensure efficient containment.

In addition to the ambitious house-to-house survey being undertaken by authorities, Delhi also started a Serological survey to test 20,000 random samples in the city to check for the prevalence of the disease in the general population.

CM Kejriwal, in an online briefing on Saturday, said that increased testing and isolation, ramping up of hospital beds, ensuring pulse oximeters for patients in home isolation, plasma therapy and aggressive survey and screening is what will win the COVID-19 battle in the Capital.

The CM said, "Our first decision was reserving 40 per cent of bed capacity for the treatment of Corona patients in all the big hospitals in Delhi. Our second decision was declaring some of the hospitals in Delhi as fully dedicated COVID hospitals. Our third decision was attaching hotels to the hospitals. If a hospital has 100 beds, the hotel attached to it will have 200 beds."

Kejriwal said people were having trouble accessing testing facilities earlier but with changed policies, the process was made more accessible resulting in a significant increase in testing numbers. "I want to thank the Central government for providing antigen kits for conducting rapid testing in Delhi. We have also procured 6 lakh kits to conduct these tests, but the initial kits given by the Central government helped us," he said.

The CM said that the Delhi government had already procured 4,000 pulse oximeters concentrators and made sure that patients in home isolation have pulse oximeters. "Our third weapon is oximeters and oxygen concentrators. The biggest issue in Corona is that a person may die due to constantly lowering oxygen levels. All beds in Delhi government hospitals have attained supply of oxygen for patients," Kejriwal said, adding that promising results from initial plasma therapy trials had shown it needed to be embraced to prevent as many deaths as possible albeit with all the caution that the science behind it advises.