Kejriwal calls new home isolation rule ‘chaotic’
NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday called the new home isolation guidelines for COVID-19 patients in the Capital chaotic and said the Centre’s decision would create more problems than solve them, in a new development with respect to the riff-raff over the home quarantine rules.
“The Central government’s order to have a mandatory clinical assessment of Corona positive patients in the government facility is chaotic,” the Chief Minister said, adding that if a Covid patient has a high fever, it would unreasonable to expect them to stand in
line outside a Covid Care Centre for clinical assessment. Kejriwal said the Delhi government’s earlier guide
lines on home isolation were much more efficient and noted that under those rules if a patient tested positive, a medical team from the government would visit them at home and make a decision as to whether they qualify for home isolation or not.
His comments came after days of confusion among patients in the city over what to do when they test positive. According to the new guidelines, all positive patients must go to a Covid facility for clinical assessment after which their home will be assessed for home isolation and if they qualify, they will be sent back home. Kejriwal had visited a banquet hall in Central Delhi, opposite LNJP Hospital, where a 100-bedded facility is being built to house Coronavirus patients. He added that the Delhi government had now built enough beds to deal with the caseload as the number of hospitalised patients is coming under control. He said: “People who are getting infected are majorly recovering at their homes, and there is no requirement of additional beds in Delhi right now.” Meanwhile, Delhi’s COVID-19 count surpassed that of Mumbai on Wednesday, making it the city with the highest total number of cases at 70,390. However, the number of active cases in the Capital stood at 26,588 and with 64 deaths added to the toll, pandemic fatalities here have reached 2,365. The city reported over 3,700 cases in the last 24 hours and conducted 19,059 tests in the same period.