Pune: Asymptomatic patients to be home quarantined for 17 days

PUNE: Divisional commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar on Monday said the state government’s decision of June 6 regarding the home quarantine of asymptomatic Covid-19 patients would be implemented in the district with conditions as prescribed in the guidelines.
The treating medical officer’s certificate stating that the patient had mild or no symptoms and the patient’s consent to get himself or herself home quarantined were the two most important conditions, he told a joint online conference addressed, among others, by Pune district collector Naval Kishore Ram and police commissioner K Venkatesham. The patient would also have to furnish an affidavit in a prescribed format, he said.

Mhaisekar said, “The duration of home quarantine will be 17 days from the day a patient shows mild symptoms or, in case of no symptoms, from the day the sample is collected for testing and no fever is reported for 10 successive days. No test will be required after the mandatory quarantine period is over.”
He said, “The place where a patient seeks to get home quarantined must have adequate facilities and a person taking care of the patient on a 24X7 basis. Such caregiver must stay connected either by landline or cellphone with the hospital treating the patient. The caregiver and other members of the patient’s family will be given hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) prophylaxis as a precaution.”
The number of nCoV deaths in Pune district crossed the 500-mark with total 501 casualties reported till 3pm on Monday. Of the 12,147 positive cases reported since the outbreak of the virus, as many as 7,619 patients have been discharged and 4,027 cases remain active in the district. The recovery rate was 62.72%, he said, adding that fresh cases were still being reported.
Mhaisekar said efforts were on to double the Covid-19 testing capacity of public and private facilities in Pune, from the present 3,000 to 6,000 samples per day. “We have had meetings with the National Institute of Virology, which is working towards a 60-70% increase in its existing testing capacity, and the National AIDS Research Institute, which is trying to treble its capacity,” he said.