CM hails Delhi’s Covid-19 model, says it worked due to teamwork

The chief minister was addressing a special one-day session of the Delhi Assembly.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal Monday hailed the Delhi Model of treatment and containment of Covid-19 and said the aggressive testing being done in the national capital is unmatched not just in the country, but also in the world. In a first, Kejriwal also revealed that over 1.15 lakh people have been treated under Delhi’s home isolation programme so far, of whom 30 have died.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal arrives for the special assembly session on Monday. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

The chief minister was addressing a special one-day session of the Delhi Assembly. He began by recalling the initial days of the Covid-19 pandemic, after the first case in Delhi was reported on March 2. He said Delhi, like Mumbai, was badly hit as 32,000 people returned to the capital from other countries.

“And you can perceive, most of these people must have already been infected. There were 5,000 to 6000 cases in Delhi when the pandemic started,” he said.

Hailing the Delhi Model, Kejriwal said the strategy of ‘test, treat, track and isolate’ worked “because of the two crore people of Delhi”.

“Today, the maximum number of tests, across the world, is conducted by Delhi. Around 60,000 tests are conducted daily, which is 3,000 tests per million people...while the national average is 819,” the chief minister said.

He said it was the Delhi government which “introduced” home isolation and also opened the “world’s first plasma bank” at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences.

“We have treated around 115,254 people in home isolation until now, of whom 16,568 are still in isolation and 96,288 have recovered. Only 30 people have died (among those in home isolation),” he said.

Opposition leader and BJP MLA from Badarpur Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said after Kejriwal and deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia made panic inducing statements that Delhi would hit 5 lakh cases by July, Union home minister Amit Shah was forced to take charge of Delhi’s Covid management.

“Shah arranged for 20,000 new beds, provided ventilators, oxygen cylinders, oximeter PPE kits etc. to Delhi government hospitals. The Centre provided for door-to door testing, and antigen testing was made available at 169 places. The cost of testing and treatment in private facilities was reduced,” he said.

Bidhuri said Prime Minister Narendra Modi provided 72 lakh poor people in Delhi with free food rations for the past three months. “And the Delhi government is pasting Kejriwal’s photo on these kits and distributing them to people calling them ‘CM’s relief package’,” Bidhuri said.

Kejriwal responded with, “I always say, the credit is yours and the responsibility mine. Whenever Delhi faces trouble, the responsibility would be mine. Delhi’s Covid story is the result of teamwork. I want to thank the Centre for helping us whenever we needed them. They gave us PPE kits, oxygen cylinders and testing kits. No government can handle it all alone. Society came forward to help us; the two crore people of Delhi; many social organisations and doctors’ associations helped us,” the chief minister said.