Harsh Vardhan, AAP at odds over Delhi strategy
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Testing, contact tracing and isolating and treating should be the strategy, but Delhi seems to be going in reverse on it.
nNEW DELHI: Delhi’s action against laboratories and hospitals over the past few days, stopping some from conducting tests, amid a spike in the number of cases and a spate of anecdotal reports about the difficulties of getting tested or finding a hospital bed, came in from sharp attack from the Union health minister who said the state is diluting the Centre’s guidelines and hiding numbers.
His comments, made in an interview to HT, evoked an equally sharp response from the state’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government which termed it a “wrong assessment”.
“Testing, contact tracing and isolating and treating should be the strategy but Delhi seems to be going reverse on the strategy. All states, including Maharashtra and Telangana, are religiously following guidelines to manage Covid except for Delhi, which seems to be diluting the issue,” Harsh Vardhan said.
“The labs are being threatened. There is no need to hide numbers as the need is to actively look for people who are infected. Whether you place them under home quarantine, in Covid care centres or health centres depends on their condition; but you definitely cannot leave them undiagnosed and untreated as they will then be roaming around freely, then get sick and report to hospital late. Not to mention how many others they would have infected,” he added.
His reference is to the Delhi government’s move to act against hospitals for not following testing guidelines, preventing some of them from conducting tests; and also to its new guidelines that say asymptomatic people who may be
HARSH VARDHAN, Union health minister
direct contacts of infected will not be tested unless they are senior citizens or have co-morbidities.
“These people need to be far more serious and sincere and meticulous in their approach in dealing with the pandemic. They seem to be utterly confused in their approach — look at the way they are forcing private hospitals to treat both Covid and non-covid patients. It runs the risk of crossinfection among patients and health care workers. What do they want to do; turn Delhi into Italy?,” Harsh Vardhan asked. Italy was one of the worst affected countries by the coronavirus disease, with a death toll of 33,899 from 234,998 cases.
Delhi’s case load has increased by 5,560 in the past week (Monday to Sunday), with the state adding an average of 794 cases a day. And while, at 2018, the state has tested the most per million population among all Indian states, anecdotally, at least, it has become more difficult to get tested.
The health minister added that Delhi is clearly mismanaging the situation, and claimed that he pointed this out to Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain and LG Anil Baijal during his review of the Covid situation last week.
According to people present in the review meeting that took place through video conference on June 4, a war of words broke out between the union health minister and Delhi health minister on the issue of Covid management in general, and, specifically, allegations by Delhi government against Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital , including claims that its sample testing was full of errors.
“All Central government hospitals in Delhi, including RML, are hospitals of repute and people there are working hard around the clock to handle Covid rush and then to allege they were fudging test results is abhorrent. Test results can change within days but it does not mean there was an error in testing. All our hospitals are trying to accommodate as many patients as possible to ensure there’s no inconvenience. We have created such advanced facilities in Delhi but they (the state government) seem to find fault with everything,” said Harsh Vardhan.
The AAP refuted all of the allegations.
“That’s a wrong assessment. Perhaps they don’t have complete data. We have acted against only 6 labs out of 42. Do they support wrongdoings by labs? Do they want Delhi government to turn a blind eye to wrongdoings? Or is central government trying to protect shoddy work done by RML lab where negative patients were declared positive?” AAP said in a statement issued in response to HT’S queries.
“The Delhi government is committed to protecting the lives and health of its people and will actively take all necessary action if anyone plays with the lives of the people. The CM had mentioned in his press conference that some if these private labs and hospitals are powerful and have connections in all political parties. Therefore, we are not surprised at Union Health Minister’s statement,” the statement added.