MoHFW revised the discharge policy of COVID-19 patients ; AYUSH Sanjivani App launched after Arogya Setu
DELHI: On Monday, in its latest health bulletin, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare stated that 4,213 new COVID-19 cases were reported in the last 24 hours. Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary of Health Ministry stated that the rise in the numbers came along with 1,559 recoveries on Monday showing a recovery rate of 31.15% at present. The total number of cases is at 67,152 with 20,917 recoveries while 44,029 people are under active medical supervision.
On Friday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released its revised policy for the discharge of COVID-19 patients. Today, it was mentioned in the health briefing saying that the discharge policy for coronavirus patients has been changed. The decision was taken by the Centre following other nations. In a statement the Union Health Ministry said that, “Because several countries have changed their policy from test-based strategy to symptom and time-based strategy. We have also changed it based on this.”
The MoHFW stated that as per the revised COVID-19 discharge policy, mild/very mild/ pre-symptomatic cases admitted to COVID-19 care facility can be discharged after 10 days of symptom onset and if there is no fever for three days.
In the earlier advisory, COVID-19 patients could be discharged only after chest radiograph clearance, viral clearance in respiratory samples, and if two of the patient’s specimens were negative within a period of 24 hours.
However, today, in a statement Lav Agarwal said that “No need to test before discharge, home isolation advised after discharge.”
The Joint Health Secretary dismissed the reports of the proposal of community wise mapping of COVID-19 transmission by the government and called it an ‘irresponsible piece of news’.
Clarifying that no such thing was going to be followed in India, he said that, “COVID-19 does not see people’s caste, creed or religion.”
The health ministry further informed that the
Indian Council of Medical Research & the National Centre for Disease Control will be conducting a population-based sero survey in selected districts of the country. The aim is to monitor trends in prevalence of SARS-COV2 infection at district level. The throat and nasal swabs will be collected for RT-PCR tests.
In the further move, the blood test to detect the antibodies in the samples would be done through antibody testing ELISA kits.
The Chairman of Empowered Group 9, Mr. Ajay
Sahni informed that the Arogya Setu app has been downloaded in 9.8 crore smartphones so far. It will be available on Jio feature smartphones from tomorrow. He further added that the government has worked a lot on data privacy of Arogya Setu users & made sure that user data is not compromised.
He stated that the personal identity of users is not revealed to anyone, it is being used only for protecting the user and others from the virus transmission. He also said that the location data is used in order to facilitate containment actions and to protect the community. Meanwhile, the data is stored for only 30 days on the app & even the data of positive patients is also deleted from the server, 60 days after the date of cure.
He further announced that another app named AYUSH Sanjivani has been launched to assess the impact of AYUSH interventions.