NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the coronavirus tests conducted in the national capital is highest in the world with 3,057 tests conducted here per day per million population.
Addressing the Delhi Assembly in a special session, Kejriwal said around 3,000 corona tests were conducted per million population per day in the UK, 1,388 in the US, 2,311 in Russia, and 858 in Peru while India has an average of 819 tests per million per day.
He further said that the coronavirus in Delhi has been controlled to a huge extent and this was possible only with the support of the 2 crore people of Delhi. He said that the Delhi model is being discussed across the world due to various measures taken by the government.
"First, we need to understand that the situation of coronavirus, was the toughest in Delhi across the country. We must keep this in mind whenever we compare the situation from other states. Coronavirus in India came from outside, India did not have any COVID-19 cases of its own. Coronavirus had a huge impact in countries such as Italy and London, and many other countries and the Indians living there asked the governments of those cities that they wanted to go back to Delhi.
"The Indian government decided to bring these people back to India by sending special flights. Delhi is the national capital of India, and so 80% to 90% of all the flights landed in Delhi. Coronavirus was a new disease then, and nobody knew about any protocol or guidelines to be followed, no quarantine, and no isolation...," Kejriwal said.
"Coronavirus was a new disease then, and nobody knew about any protocol or guidelines to be followed, no quarantine, and no isolation. Our Health Secretary wrote a letter to all the district magistrates on March 22, in which he has written that 32000 passengers have come back to India in a single month. He also wrote that the 32,000 people who have landed in Delhi have gone to different parts of the city, and the need is to identify them," he said.
"Centre had then released Corona guidelines around March 18 which necessitated quarantining of people traveling from outside. It was impossible to identify these 32,000 people spread all over Delhi. These 32000 people had travelled from nations where the impact of Coronavirus was huge, and you can perceive that most of these people must already be infected by Corona. The cases were not 0 in number, there were 5000-6000 cases in Delhi when Coronavirus started. Then the lockdown happened, and there was nothing, no PPE or testing kits," the Delhi CM said.
Thanking the central government for providing all necessary support to tackle the pandemic, CM Kejriwal stated, "If Delhi would have tried to handle it alone, we would not have been able to do it. We took help from everyone. 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."
The Chief Minister further said that "Delhi Model is being discussed all across the world. This Delhi Model is not because of Kejriwal, it is because of the two crore people of Delhi. The biggest strength of the people of Delhi is that they have an honest, hardworking, and educated government.
"In the last 5-6 months, the people of Delhi have shown the path not only in Coronavirus management but in a lot of developmental issues. The maximum number of tests across the world and all the nations are conducted in Delhi. Around 60,000 tests are conducted in Delhi on a daily basis, which means that 3,000 tests are conducted per day on 1,000,000 people.
"On the per day testing front, which is 3,000 per day per 1,000,000 across the country, Delhi is at the top, Andhra Pradesh is second at 1362, Gujarat is third at 1000 which is one-third of us, Karnataka at 983, Haryana is 990, Maharashtra is 802, Uttar Pradesh is 670, and the average of the whole nation is 819," he said.
"Just like 3,000 tests per day per million in Delhi, England is also testing at 3,000 per day per million, the SA is at 1,388 per day per million, Russia is at 2,300, Peru is at 858 tests per day per million, which means that the tests in Delhi are the maximum. We have tested around 21,00,000 lakh people in Delhi until now, which is 11 per cent of the 2 crore population of Delhi. No other state or city in the world has tested 10 per cent of its total population," Kejriwal added.
Addressing the session, he further said, "We have conducted micro-audits of the Coronavirus cases, hospitals, and the process a patient goes through in Delhi. We conducted micro-management of all hospitals in Delhi. Today, the death rate in Delhi is 0.6 per cent, which I think is the least in all the states.
"Second, the home isolation idea was invented in Delhi for the first time across the world. We used to study the visuals and reports of all nations on the Internet across the world. We used to hear that across countries, hospitals were crowded and patients were laying on the roads, and we used to feel that if the European countries were like this, what would happen with Delhi?..."
He said, "We have treated around 11,5254 people in home isolation until now, out of which 16,568 people are still in home isolation and 96,288 people have recovered. Only 30 people have died out of 1.25 lakh people in home isolation, which is 0.03 per cent 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. We have given confidence to Corona warriors that the whole country and the government is with you..."
Kejriwal also said that the work that we started in April and May, the President of the US Donald Trump allowed that on August 19, 2020.
"Around 1,965 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. The people from the entire nation trust the hospitals in Delhi, be it government or private. People from Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Punjab, and until now we have treated 5,264 people from outside Delhi," he added.
