Bed scarcity prompts officials to relax home quarantine norms

Coimbatore: Gone are the days when the city corporation or health department would insist on institutional quarantine, if you test positive for Covid-19. With the steady spike in the number of active cases and hospitals starting to run out of beds, the district administration and civic body are now permitting more patients to stay in home care.
Unlike earlier, home quarantine wouldn’t be denied if there are children and senior citizens at home. If you are mildly symptomatic without any comorbidities and have a separate room to remain in isolation, you are eligible to stay at home. However, the final call rests with the doctor at your nearest primary health centre.
As on Thursday, there were around 444 patients in home quarantine. According to officials, the number is likely to increase exponentially over the weekend.
Presently, there are five Covid care centres with 2,120 beds, of which around 1,000 are occupied. Most patients from the city limits only want to be accommodated at the centre at Codissia trade fair complex.
“People say there are more doctors and nurses there. We feel safer there,” said a man who was trying to get his wife admitted there after the ESI Hospital turned her away stating she was only mildly symptomatic. A resident of Peedampalli, he preferred the Codissia centre, which added one more exclusive ward for women on Friday after the existing one became full on Thursday, to the one at Karumathampatti.
The city corporation and revenue department are working to ready another four Covid care centres in the city. The centres are, however, unlikely to be ready to accommodate patients at least until Monday. Hence, many primary health centre doctors had allowed people who tested positive for the virus on Thursday and Friday to home quarantine.
A resident of Selvapuram said, “My father is at the Codissia Covid care centre. He is happy with the food, medicines and monitoring. My mother was not comfortable in a general ward setting. So, doctor allowed her to remain at home. A doctor came and gave her medications for five days and told us that a nurse would check on us daily.”
While trying to address the issue of bed shortage, the health department is also ramping up testing to bring down the positivity rate, which was brought down to 9.1% as on August 24 from 11.25% in the first half of the month.
Dr G Ramesh Kumar, deputy director of public health, said, “We have increased the number of samples being tested for Covid-19 to 4,800 a day from 2,700. Besides testing symptomatic patients at fever camps, we also trace contacts of every positive case. Corporation workers are going door to door to identify symptomatic patients and people who entered from other districts and states to test them for Covid-19.”