First patient discharged from Delhi's largest Covid care centre

NewDelhi: A 39-year-old man was discharged from the newly set up Sardar Patel Covid care centre on Monday, becoming the first patient to be completely cured of the disease at the facility here, officials said.

The patient, a resident of South Delhi, was admitted to the Covid care centre on July 5, they said.

He is the first patient to be discharged from the facility created at the Radha Soami Beas centre in Chattarpur, a senior official said.

ITBP doctors at the facility clapped for him and bid him goodbye. The man was also given a rose stem, a memento, and a Covid-19 free certificate as he boarded an ambulance for home, the official said.

He has been advised another seven days of home isolation.

A total of 147 patients have been admitted to the Covid centre till now, the official said.

It has two segments -- a Covid Care Centre (CCC), where asymptomatic positive coronavirus cases will be treated and a Dedicated Covid Health Care (DCHC), which will treat symptomatic cases and have an oxygen support system. As per the scheme, the CCC will have 90 per cent beds while the DCHC will have the rest 10 per cent beds.

The border guarding force had taken over the centre after being directed by the Union Home Ministry to act as the nodal agency.

A team of over 1,000 doctors, nurses and paramedic staff of the ITBP and other paramilitary forces have been earmarked to work at the facility.

One thousand more ancillary and security staff have been deployed in shifts at the facility. The centre also has about 75 ambulances.

The total bed capacity at this centre can be ramped up to 10,200. The centre is 1,700 feet long and 700 feet wide -- roughly the size of 20 football fields -- and has 200 enclosures with 50 beds each.

Officials have said this is the largest Covid-19 care centre in the national capital as well as in the country.

The south Delhi district administration is providing administrative support to the centre apart from the volunteers of the Radha Soami Beas.

The ITBP was the first organisation in the country to have created a 1,000-bed quarantine centre for coronavirus affected people.

The centre in Chhawla area of south-west Delhi has treated about 1,200 people, including 42 foreigners who were brought to India on special evacuation flights from Wuhan in China and Italy, after the Covid-19 outbreak a few months back.

It also created the first standard operating procedures for management of the pandemic among the various CAPFs and central and state police organisations.

The about 90,000 personnel-strong force is primarily tasked to guard the 3,488 km-long Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China.