Delinking hotels from hospitals as Delhi’s COVID-19 situation improves

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday announced delinking of hotels from hospitals in view of the improving COVID-19 situation in the national capital.

Kejriwal said all beds in such hotels, which were recently attached to hospitals, were lying vacant for the last many days.

The decision was taken after the chief minister reviewed the COVID-19 situation in the city.

“Some hotels were attached to hospitals to increase the number of COVID beds. In view of the improving situation and all hotel beds lying vacant for the last many days, these hotels are now being released,” Kejriwal tweeted.

As the city started witnessing a surge in number of COVID-19 cases last month, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government had attached around 40 hotels to hospitals to increase the bed capacity in the city.

According to the Delhi health bulletin, 12,633 COVID-19 beds in hospitals and more than 4,700 beds in dedicated COVID care centres were lying vacant due to declining number of positive cases of coronavirus.

The number of active cases of COVID-19 was 10,887 on Tuesday including 6,219 patients recuperating under home isolation.

Patients with moderate symptoms staying at such hotels received basic healthcare and were to be shifted to the attached hospitals in case their condition worsened.

Three hotels in south west Delhi were earlier this month delinked from their respective hospitals due to low occupancy. But the decision was reversed by the district authorities within a day.

In another tweet, the Chief Minister directed officers to ensure strict compliance of existing guidelines on COVID-19 testing in the national capital.

“Existing guidelines say that if any patient’s antigen test is negative but has symptoms, RT-PCR (Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction) test must be done on him. I directed the officers today to ensure strict compliance of these guidelines,” he tweeted.

The direction comes two days after the Delhi Hight Court asked the Aam Aadmi Party government why it was going with Rapid Antigen Testing (RAT), which has a high rate of false negative results, as the primary test for COVID-19 infection. – The Hindu