Ghaziabad: Month since launch, home isolation achieves 69% discharge rate

Ghaziabad: It has been about a month since the Uttar Pradesh government allowed home isolation for asymptomatic coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients and the facility has come out as the preferred choice for residents of Ghaziabad since.

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Officials said that about 781 patients were allowed home isolation since July 21, when it was announced, and 540 were discharged with a recovery rate of about 69.14% till August 21.

Under this facility, asymptomatic patients are allowed to remain in isolation at home as against the previous norms when every positive patient in the state was required to get admitted to a Covid facility. Permission for home isolation came through on July 20 and the facility was allowed in Ghaziabad from July 21.

“Patients in home isolation are monitored regularly by teams stationed at the integrated command and control centre and initial visits are made by our rapid response teams. Since people prefer to stay in the comfort of their home, they are opting for it. With this, our efforts for their regular monitoring have also intensified. The recovery rate is also high in such cases,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate.

Although home isolation facility is akin to L-1 category facility, the recovery rate stood at 69.14% from July 21 to August 21. On the other hand, the recovery rate of patients in 10 private hospitals which are allowed paid Covid treatment stood at 68.75%.

According to official records, about 720 patients opted for paid Covid treatment and 495 of these got discharged during the same period. The paid Covid facilities generally provide L-2 and L-3 category treatment.

The recovery rate for the government’s L-1, L-2 and L-3 facilities, however, stood high at 97.06% according to official records starting July 21 to August 21. The different hospitals under the three categories had admission of 1,430 patients while 1,388 of them recovered during the period.

The L1 category facilities are meant for asymptomatic patients while L2 cater to patients who have moderate complications. The L3 hospitals provide treatment to patients who develop severe Covid-19 symptoms and require a higher level of care and treatment.

“The patients in home isolation are regularly monitored and it is due to this that we have no fatality which resulted so far. It is due to regular daily monitoring that we tracked the condition of patients in home isolation and 44 were immediately referred to L1, L2 or L3 category hospitals or some of them even opted for paid Covid treatment,” said an officer from the health department who wished not to be named.

“We are already giving hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin to patients and their family members as prophylactic and soon we will also start with doxycycline for patients. It is due to the popularity of home isolation that the majority of asymptomatic patients are opting for it. This has resulted in reducing the burden on government facilities,” the officer added.

Overall, there are 1,466 beds operational in government’s L1, L2 and L3 category facilities and 1,156 of these are presently vacant while 310 occupied by active patients according to the official figures till August 21.

The official figures also state that in 10 paid private Covid hospitals in Ghaziabad there are 598 beds available which are presently occupied by 225 patients who are undergoing different treatments along with complications of Covid-19.

According to the records of the state control room on August 22, the Ghaziabad district has a total of 7,126 patients which includes 1,142 active cases, 5,917 discharges and 67 deaths so far. This gives the district a discharge rate of 83.03% while the rate of active cases is about 16.02%.

On the other hand, the Noida district had a better discharge rate of patients in home isolation. The discharge rate was about 74.96% on August 21 with 572 patients in home isolation discharged out of total 763 who opted for the facility so far.

The rate of discharge for the Noida district was about 80.05% till August 22 when 590 patients of total of 737 got discharged from home isolation.

“We are focussing on quality treatment of each patient who are in hospitals or in home isolation. We are taking constant feedback and striving for better patient satisfaction,” said Suhas LY, district magistrate of Gautam Budh Nagar.

According to the guidelines of the UP government, the patients in home isolation are marked as “recovered” once they complete 10 days of home isolation. After this, they are required to stay in home quarantine for a period of seven days.

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