All govt hospitals to get wards for suspected COVID cases to bring down death rate

“During the daily door-to-door checking, if the field workers find anyone with complaints of breathlessness, the person would be immediately taken to the ward level doctor and then to the suspect COVID-19 ward without waiting for the tests. This would help reduce mortality rate,” he told reporters after flagging off LED video awareness vehicles for Covid-19. 

“We have started this effort a week ago,” he said, adding that mortality rate would come down by 0.2 to 0.3 per cent through this effort. The Commissioner said positivity rate has come down from 37 per cent in June to about 9.5-11 per cent with the multi-fold increase in the testing. “We were testing 4,000 to 5,000 persons before June 15. But it was scaled up to 14,000. On an average, we are testing 12,000 persons a day,” he noted.