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Ghaziabad: New govt policy, home isolation speed up discharge rate
The Uttar Pradesh government’s order on discharge of Covid patients and allowing home isolation for asymptomatic ones has come as a breather for officials who were
The Uttar Pradesh government’s order on discharge of Covid patients and allowing home isolation for asymptomatic ones has come as a breather for officials who were scampering to open new L1 category hospitals to keep pace with the rise in the number of virus cases.
The order over a period of seven days has also led to a drastic reduction in the number of beds being occupied at L1 category hospitals.
The L1, L2 and L3 category hospitals were special dedicated Covid facilities that were opened by the state government in order to treat asymptomatic/mild, moderate and critical patients, respectively.
According to official records till Monday morning, about 81% beds of 776 available in three L1 Covid hospitals in the district were vacant.
The home isolation policy was allowed by the UP government on July 20, with the state administration a day later also issuing revised discharge guidelines, which helped more asymptomatic Covid-19 patients in going home, thereby freeing up beds in three L1 hospitals.
At one point of time on July 17, the number of active patients in Ghaziabad had peaked tat 1,560 — the district’s all time high so far.
“The number of active cases is coming down as more patients are getting discharged from L1 hospitals due to revised discharge policy. Earlier, the asymptomatic patients were getting discharged 10 days after their date of admission. Now, the asymptomatic patients are getting discharged patients on tenth day from the date of sampling. So, the new policy has benefitted as we have early discharge of 2-3 days as per the revised rules,” said an official from the health department.
As a result of more discharges, the three L1 hospitals of ESIC Sahibabad (76 beds), Divyajyoti Hospital (350 beds) in Niwari and SRM College (350 beds) in Modinagar had only 54, 12 and 78 active cases, respectively, till Monday morning.
The three hospitals at present have a combined discharge rate of about 80.76%, with total discharge of 1,404 patients out of the 1,715 admitted so far. The Divyajyoti and SRM Hospitals were opened only about a month ago.
Prior to these, the CHC at Muradnagar and St Joseph Hospital at Nandgram were also admitting L1 patients, but were subsequently closed down. According to official figures, the three operational hospitals have referred a total of 176 patients to L2 and L3 hospitals so far.
As a result of the revised discharge policy in place, the Ghaziabad officials in past five days (July 22 to July 26) have discharged 843 patients overall.
The government’s nod for home isolation policy has also impacted in freeing up L1 Covid beds, as asymptomatic patients can now stay at home without having to get mandatorily admitted to L1 Covid hospitals.
“The home isolation is slowly picking up. During the last three days we received about 99 requests from patients for home isolation and our response teams got in touch with them to ascertain their condition and also check the norms under which they can be home isolated. So far, we have about 81 asymptomatic patients who were found eligible for home isolation while the rest of the applications are getting processed,” said Ajay Shankar Pandey, district magistrate.
The list of 81 patients in home isolation include 18 under jurisdiction of Kavi Nagar police station area, 15 under Sihani Gate, nine each under Indirapuram and Kushambi police stations, 11 under Sahibabad and seven under Kotwali police station area, among others.
After the two new rules were brought in, the district’s rate has shot up to an all time high of 78.43% out of 4619 total cases till July 26. The rate stood at 76.39% till May 31 (total 305 cases) and dropped to 45.69% till June 30 (1,615 total cases).
At present, Ghaziabad district has 932 active cases (till July 26), a majority of which are in city areas. According to the records of the health department, the residential segment of Raj Nagar — comprising colonies like Raj Nagar, Sanjay Nagar, New Friends Colony, Govindpuram, Kamla Nehru Nagar, Panchsheel Primrose, Guldhar and Bhatta Number 5 — contain in them the highest number — 109 — of active cases till July 26.
The second highest number of active cases, 93, are under the residential segment of Karhera-2, which has localities like Indirapuram, Kanwani and Makanpur.
The Sahibabad-2 segment is at third spot in terms and has total of 76 active cases till July 26. The segment includes colonies like Raj Bagh, Shalimar Garden, Shyam Park, Rajendra Nagar, Lajpat Nagar and Shalimar Garden Extension etc.
“With active cases now on the decline, we do not need to open more L1 hospitals but we will continue for some more time with the existing L1 category hospitals. The ESIC Hospital is on way to getting converted to an L2 category hospital,” Pandey added.
”If we need to open more L1 hospitals, we have several facilities having total of 800 L1 beds which can be opened up in a day,” he added.
Box1:
ESIC Hospital at Sahibabad: Total patients: 645; Discharged: 521 ; Referred: 70; Active cases: 54
Divyajyoti Hospital at Niwari: Total patients: 623; Discharged: 570; Referred: 41; Active cases: 12
SRM College at Modinagar: Total patients: 447; Discharged: 313; Referred: 56; Active cases: 78
Box2: Top three residential segments having highest active cases
1. Raj Nagar segment – active cases 109
Localities covered: Raj Nagar, Sanjay Nagar, New Friends Colony, Govindpuram, Kamla Nehru Nagar, Panchsheel Primrose, Guldhar and Bhatta Number 5
2. Karhera 2 segment – active cases 93;
Localities covered: Indirapuram, kanawani and Makanpur
3. Sahibabad 2 segment – active cases 76
Localities covered: Raj Bagh, Shalimar Garden, Shyam Park, Rajendra Nagar, Lajpat Nagar and Shalimar Garden Extension, etc
