A medical technologist tests a respiratory panel at Northwell Health Labs, where the same test will be used on the COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, after being authorized to begin semi-automated testing by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Lake Success, New York, U.S., March 11, 2020. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
By Joymala Bagchi
New Delhi [India], April 27 (ANI): The national capital is seeing a surge in the number of patients being recovered from the coronavirus. As per the health bulletin of Delhi government, till Sunday with 1,987 active cases, the number of recovered patients is 877, while the death count stands at 54.
“If you see the figures of the patients who have recovered and gone back is quite encouraging and better than any other States in the country. The percentage of people becoming asymptomatic from symptomatic is more as compared to the people going to ICU or on ventilators,” said Dr JC Passi, Medical Director, Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan and GB Pant Hospitals, while talking to ANI.
Experts earlier confirmed that the biggest comorbidity is the age. People falling under 60 plus age group are more vulnerable as most of them are hypertensive, have some cardiac ailments or diabetes. Dr Rakesh Garg, Additional Professor, Department of Onco-Anaesthesia and Palliative Medicine, who is currently working at COVID Facility, National Cancer Institute, AIIMS-Jhajjar, said that around 80 per cent of the patients are having mild symptoms of coronavirus.
“The percentage of people, who are critically ill is less than five per cent. Only their rate of recovery is a little less, though the overall recovery rate is more than 95 per cent,” added Dr Garg. He said the majority of patients, who need ICU facility or even expired, are elderly people or people with co-morbidity among whom the poor outcome of the treatment is noticed. Since April 18, the Delhi government in its daily health bulletin has introduced a recovery column in an effort to have a more clear understanding of the overall recovery rate.
BL Sherwal, Medical Director, Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, a designated state COVID-19 hospital, said: “The recovery rate as of now is very high. We have around 190 positive cases of which most have mild symptoms.”
“The majority of them has recovered. We have discharged many of them after they were tested negative. Importantly the mortality rate is also very low with only two deaths here at Rajiv Gandhi Hospital. However, a strategy needs to be built on how people respond after the lockdown is over. We have to keep a watch on that too,” added Sherwal.
So far, the total number of containment zones in Delhi has reached 95, which has 4,02,184 population. Initially, the country went on a three-week nation-wide lockdown till April 14 which was subsequently extended till May 3 to contain the chain of transmission of the virus.
