Health min to replicate Delhi’s Covid-19 model in other states

nNEWDELHI: The Union health ministry intends to replicate the “successful Delhi model” in other states with large outbreaks of Covid-19, a Union health ministry official said on Thursday, citing the example of how authorities in the Capital were able to bring down a key metric – the case positivity rate – from 37% in June to 6% this week.

Case positivity rate refers to the number of people found positive among all people who are tested for Covid-19 on a particular day – a proportion that determines how prevalent the disease is and how well health officials are able to catch and isolate patients.

“The improved numbers show that test, trace and treat strategy has worked very well and Delhi is a prime example before us as it managed to successfully contain the disease spread with the help of the centre. The situation is being managed in two ways: keeping the infection low, and also keeping the mortality low. Experts have shown that in 80% of the positive cases it is possible to trace close contacts within 72 hours. This model will have to be adopted in other states also,” said Rajesh Bhushan, officer on special duty, health ministry.

In an interview to HT on July 18, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal credited a five-point “Delhi Model” – increased testing, home isolation of mild cases, availability of hospital beds, transparency of data, and plasma therapy – for helping the region become one of the few in the country to be able to rein in the outbreak.

On Thursday, the health ministry’s Bhushan reiterated there was no community transmission in the country. “In India, there are clusters of cases and pockets of localised transmission, and the solution to contain it lies in aggressive testing, effective surveillance, contact tracing and clinical management of those infected to be able to fight it successfully,” he said.

Bhushan also referred to the one million recoveries, a milestone India passed on Wednesday and said it “shows how much effort has been put in by our doctors, nurses, paramedic and other frontline workers in managing the outbreak”.

India’s case fatality rate (CFR) also declined from 3.33% on June 18 to 2.21% on July 30, he said, adding: “Our target is to bring the case fatality rate to 1% or less, and case positivity rate to 10% in first phase, and later to 5% in states with high case load as per the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines,” said Bhushan.

Eight states have achieved CFR of 1% and below.

“The ultimate aim is to save lives and it is a positive trend that we are losing fewer patients as compared to other Covid-19 affected countries,” says Dr GC Khilnani, former head, pulmonology department, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.