HOW DELHI IS TACKLING THE SURGE IN CASES

BEDS Delhi now has around 13,500 beds available, out of which nearly 7,500 were vacant as of Saturday afternoon, Kejriwal said. Patients with moderate disease can be treated with a battery of newly approved treatments, including the antivirals remdesivir and favipiravir.

TESTING Delhi has ramped up testing from around 5,000 tests two weeks ago to over 21,000 tests a day, with the state government adding rapid antigen testing to conventional reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction ( RT-PCR) tests for quicker results. It has placed orders for 600,000 rapid antigen test kits to top up the 50,000 kits it had acquired from the Centre.

OX METERS

The Delhi government had earlier decided it would provide pulse oximeters to every Covid patient under home isolation in the city. A key clinical sign of Covid-19 is extremely low blood oxygen level, which can lead to hypoxia or death from oxygen starvation. The healthy range of SPO2 (peripheral oxygen saturation) is between 95% and 100%, but in people with Covid-19, it may fall below 90%. Doctors recommend that the moment symptoms begin, oxygen levels must be checked frequently with a pulse oximeter — a small device that measures SPO2 at the finger tip.

PLASMA THERAPY Plasma from the blood of a recovered patient, which carries specific antibodies that can neutralise the virus, are transfused into a sick Covid-19 patient to reinforce the immune system.

SURVEYS AND SCREENING

Three major tasks are currently underway in Delhi — a house-to-house survey to identify people with symptoms, a serological survey which started on Saturday, and redrawing of the perimeters of the containment zones in the city. “Even asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic close contacts of a positive case must quarantine themselves even if you don’t feel ill,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, director, AIIMS Delhi.