Home isolation: On Day 1, most opt for hospital

Ghaziabad: Most Covid patients in Ghaziabad continued to be admitted to hospitals on the first day of the district administration allowing home isolation of asymptomatic patients.
Officials said few patients were willing to stay at home because of the fear and apprehension attached to the infection among neighbours and relatives.
“A major fallout of the Covid-19 outbreak is the stigma attached to the infection. Relatives as well as neighbours are not very comfortable with a Covid patient staying among them,” a senior official said.
District magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey iterated that the administration was fully equipped to provide isolation and care to all Covid patients. “Home isolation has just been allowed in Ghaziabad. It will take a few days for more patients to adopt this. As of now, our health mechanism is also in place to deal with such cases,” the DM added.
After an asymptomatic patient sends a request that he wants to isolate at home, a team of doctors and healthcare staff will visit his or her house and conduct an assessment of the facilities. The team will check if a patient is fully asymptomatic and has a toilet and a room to himself. The team will also check if there is an attendant to the patient and any relative in the house who falls in the high-risk group.
The patient and his relatives will be provided with medicines and a home isolation sticker will be pasted outside the house. A team will also keep tabs on the patient’s daily health.
Officials are now planning how to dispose of biomedical waste once more patients opt for home isolation. There is a plan to add polybags in the medical kit that a Covid patient is required to buy before being allowed to isolate at home.