Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday appreciated the Delhi Model to contain the covid-19 for its fight against the novel virus, while mentioning that the national capital has performed most number of tests to detect the infection in comparison to the every city in the world. 3057 tests are conducted per million population in Delhi, the Chief Minister said.
Addressing a special one-day session of the Delhi Assembly, Mr Kejriwal said that 2 crore people of Delhi have shown the way to the whole world in many aspects and mentioned that it was Delhi who was introduced the ideo of home quarantine.
The CM recalled the initial days of virus, after the first case of the coronavirus infection was reported on March 2. He said that Delhi was one of the worst hit cities in the country as 32,000 people landed in the capital from other countries.
“And you can perceive, most of these people must have already been infected. There were 5,000 to 6000 cases in Delhi when the pandemic started,” he said.
Mr Kejriwal said that the aggressive and effective testing in the national capital has worked along with its model of “test, treat, track and isolate”.
“Today, the maximum number of tests, across the world, is conducted by Delhi. Around 60,000 tests are conducted daily, which is 3,000 tests per million people…while the national average is 819,” the chief minister said.
Expressing gratitude towards the Centre for their considerable contribution in Delhi’s fight against coronavirus, the CM said that Delhi could not have handled it alone.
“I want to thank the Centre for helping us whenever we needed them. They gave us PPE kits, oxygen cylinders and testing kits. No government can handle it alone. The society came forward to help us, the two crore people of Delhi, many social organizations, many doctors’ associations helped us. An NGO StepOne helped us, religious organizations such as Radhaswami Satsang and Jain Dharamshala helped us,” he said.
Kejriwal compared Delhi with other countries and asserted that no other state or city in the world has tested 10% of its total population. “We have tested around 2.1 million people in Delhi until now, which is 11% of Delhi’s two crore population,” he said.
“We have treated around 115254 people in home isolation until now, out of which 16568 people are still in home isolation and 96288 people have recovered. Only 30 people have died out of 1.25 lakh people in home isolation, which is 0.03% and is most probably the least in the world. Many countries have praised the home isolation model of Delhi, even the ambassador of Korea is studying the home isolation model of Delhi,” he added.
The Chief Minister then thanked Corona warriors for their ruthless fight against the coronavirus and said that if anything happens to them, the state government will provide every possible help to their families.
“We have given confidence to Corona warriors that the whole country and the government is with you. We salute your hard work. If anything unfortunate happens with you, we will give an honorary compensation of Rs 1 crore to your family. When we announced this, the doctors and nurses gained confidence that the government is with us. I do not think no state or nation is doing this,” he mentioned.
Talking about the introduction of plasma therapy, which has turned out to be a blessing for critically ill covid patients, n Delhi, the CM said they picked up the idea from China.
“In April or May, we conducted plasma therapy trials. We read that it was happening in China, we asked for permission from the Centre and we got the permissions for Phase 1, 2, and 3. I am happy that the world’s first plasma bank was set up in ILBS hospital in Delhi. The work that we started in April and May, the President of the USA Donald Trump allowed that on August 19, 2020. Around 1965 people were given plasma in Delhi. I am happy that the people of Delhi are getting a chance to serve the people of the nation,” Mr Kejriwal said.
