Centre has Eased Guidelines: UP to stick to previous strict protocols on home isolation

“A huge number of asymptomatic patients are being detected in the state and these people are being kept in the isolation wards so that they do not spread infection in the community. Even though the Government of India has said that asymptomatic patients can stay at home and take medicines, the UP government is following the previous protocol,” said KGMU Vice-Chancellor Professor MLB Bhatt.

He also said that the patients would be discharged from the hospitals only after their two consecutive tests come out negative.

“We are discharging patients only after their two consecutive negative reports. The new recommendation (from the Centre) is that there is no need to test in asymptomatic patients. In UP, we have around 60-80 per cent asymptomatic patients. A survey, supervised by the ICMR, is currently undergoing based on the random selection of people in hotspots. It is found that a lot of asymptomatic patients are infected with coronavirus. There is no need for any medical treatment as such for these people. All they need is rest, consume a lot of water and follow the basic tips of immunity boost,” he added.

Revising home isolation guidelines, the Centre on Monday said that “there is no need for testing after the home isolation period is over”.

It has said that the “patient under home isolation will end home isolation after 17 days of onset of symptoms (or date of sampling, for pre-symptomatic cases) and no fever for 10 days.”

The earlier guidelines stated that such patients will end home isolation if symptoms are clinically resolved and the surveillance medical officer certifies him/ her to be free of infection after laboratory testing.

Confirming the information, Director General (Medical Health) Rukum Kesh said that no new guideline has been issued by the state in this regard, which means that institutional isolation of asymptomatic patients and discharge only after two consecutive negative tests will continue.

Notably in UP, only 3.4 per cent of the total isolation beds available in the state are occupied till date.

The state has 228 Level-1 hospitals, 71 hospitals of the Level-2 category (with oxygen supply) and 25 Level-3 hospitals (equipped with ventilators). When combined, the state has 53,459 isolation beds and 1260 of them have ventilator facilities. Till date, 1,823 people are under treatment in the state.

Meanwhile, 91 new cases were reported from across the state in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of coronavirus cases to 3,644. Out of them, 1,873 persons have been discharged, leaving 1,709 active cases with the recovery rate now at 51 per cent.

Two more patients died on Tuesday, taking the toll to 82. The fresh two deaths were reported from Meerut and Hapur, one each.

The fresh cases reported include 24 from Agra, 14 from Meerut, seven from Noida, six each from Jalaun and Farrukhabad, five each from Amethi, Sidharthnagar, Kannauj and Kanpur, four from Lucknow, three each from Baghpat, Gonda and Aligarh, two each from Chitrakoot, Bijnor, Pratapgarh, Hardoi, Hapur, Moradabad and Ghaziabad, and one each from Varanasi, Shamli, Bulandshahr, Firozabad, Banda, Maharajganj, Bahraich and Fatehpur.

As a result of the high recovery rate, now only three districts – Agra, Kanpur Nagar and Meerut – have active cases in triple digits.

Agra has the highest number of active cases at 420, and also the highest death toll at 24. Out of the 74 affected districts in the state, at least 36 districts have active cases in single digit. An Additional eight districts do not have any active case.