India / Delhi govt to provide pulse oximeter to all home quarantine cases

New Delhi: Noting that one of the problems being faced by coronavirus patients in home isolation is the sudden drop in oxygen levels, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Monday that all those patients will be provided pulse oximeters to monitor their oxygen levels.

Coronavirus affects the respiratory system leading to breathlessness and all those patients will be regularly monitored by teams through calls and be provided assistance with oximeters to help them stabilise.

“The Delhi government will provide pulse oximeter to all home quarantine cases,” said the CM at a press conference today. He added once the patient has recovered, the oximeters can be returned.

Experts too have recommended the use of this relatively cheap device at home that can forewarn you about any impending crisis. A pulse-oximeter costs between Rs 1,000 to 3,000.

As reported by HT earlier, the government is procuring 1 lakh pulse-oximeters - a small clip-on device that has to be attached to the finger-tip to check the amount of oxygen in the body. Current guidelines say that Covid-19 patients have to be admitted to hospitals if their oxygen saturation drops to 90% or below (normal is 95 to 100%).

The CM informed that there are 25,000 active Covid-19 cases in Delhi and around 12,000 people are presently under home isolation.

The testing has increased by three times in the city, the CM said , adding from 5,000 tests per day, it is now around 18,000 per day. He asserted that people will not face any issues in getting tested in the city.

Emphasising earlier that coronavirus positive patients do recover from the highly infectious disease, Kejriwal had said “more than 80 per cent of coronavirus positive patients either have no symptoms at all and most people recover in about 17 days if they follow proper home isolation guidelines”. The CM had urged people not to panic if they test Covid-19 positive and follow all health protocol and isolate themselves completely at home in a separate room with a separate washroom.