9,000 calls a day, tracking 4,500 international travellers: Delhi steps up vigil against coronavirus

Since the first person from Delhi tested positive this Monday, meeting after meeting have been held on the ninth-floor of the Delhi secretariat and a four-room office in a Delhi-government office in Laxmi Nagar to decide how to control the spread of the virus

Officials at Delhi’s infectious disease control cell and the district task force are making at least 9,000 calls a day, contacting over 4,500 people twice in 24 hours to check if they have symptoms of the coronavirus infection such as fever, cough or shortness of breath.

Medical staff with protective clothing seen inside a ward specialised in receiving any person who may have been infected with coronavirus, at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital, in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, March 5, 2020. (HT photo)

These people had travelled from 12 high-risk countries to Delhi and were sent home after a preliminary screening at the airport found them asymptomatic.

Since the first person from Delhi tested positive this Monday, meeting after meeting have been held on the ninth-floor of the Delhi secretariat and a four-room office in a Delhi-government office in Laxmi Nagar to decide how to control the spread of the virus.

All but two of the 166 who developed symptoms initially and were admitted to isolation wards in the two nodal hospitals -- Dr Ram Manohar Lohia and Safdarjung -- were negative.

The first was the man from Mayur Vihar and the second was 27-year-old man PayTM employee who lived in Uttam Nagar.

Twenty-nine others, including 14 who were admitted on Thursday, continue to be in the isolation ward in the two hospital. Fourteen of them were admitted to the hospital on Thursday.

Seven others, including the Mayur Vihar man’s six family members from Agra, and one driver of the Italian tourists, are also in the isolation wards in Delhi.

“Even those who did not show any symptoms during the screening at the airport are being tracked since in many cases it has been seen that the signs of the virus start showing in 14 days or more. So, those on the lists are under surveillance,” chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Wednesday after the first meeting of the state-level task force headed by him.

The meeting happened just an hour after the committee was constituted.

Meetings of seven of the district task forces were conducted on Wednesday itself just after its creation. “In fact, the minutes of all the meetings were prepared on the very same day and circulated. It has all the information on what the state and the district level task force needs to do,” said an official from the health department.

Since the screenings began mid-January, over 1.3 lakh people have been screened at the Delhi airport. The officials have been working overtime to look for the people who came in contact with those diagnosed with Covid-19 before they were sent to the isolation facility at Safdarjung hospital.

In the case of the 45-year-old man from Mayur Vihar, the officials were able to trace 92 such people. Of these, only 14 live in Delhi.

For the 74 others, the officials got in touch with respective states to track them. The state and the district level task force have also been involved in tracing the contacts of the group of Italian tourists who travelled to Rajasthan.

Apart from contact-tracing and checking with the asymptomatic passengers, the district level task force has also been involved in sanitising the places that were visited by the nine people.

This includes at least three high-end hotels.

For sanitising these spaces, the government and the staff from the hotels use a 1% hypochlorite solution to wipe down all surfaces.

“There are proper guidelines for mopping and cleaning of various surfaces. Since the people tested positive, we have sanitised all the hotels that they were in and also informed them about infection-control measures. We have sensitised our own staff members,” said a government official on condition of anonymity.

A technical session for 7,194 medical officers, paramedical staff and other health workers was conducted by the World Health Organisation.

Apart from that, the cell has been receiving over 200 queries on the three helpline numbers that have been set up. “Since people heard news of the first case in Delhi, we have been receiving a deluge of phone calls. Even those who are asymptomatic are worried and they call to ask what they should do, how they can protect against the viral disease,” said an official from the state team on condition of anonymity.