Health min visits Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital; hails staffers

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Sunday visited the Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty Hospital here lauded the staffers for their resilience and hard work in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The health facility in Dilshad Garden area of East Delhi is functioning as a dedicated 450-bedded COVID-19 hospital with adequate isolation wards.

The minister visited the flu corner, isolation and observation wards, ICUs, COVID-19 corridor, sample collection unit and changing facility for doctors and health workers.

The ministry officials said he was satisfied to notice that the doctors and health staff manning these wards are provided special bathing, changing and spray facilities for disinfecting themselves at RMO hostel.

He also interacted via videoconferencing with a doctor who was admitted to the facility after testing positive for the virus, the ministry said in a statement.

"I am happy to learn that he is hale and hearty and recuperating well at the hospital. It is very encouraging to see his high moral despite suffering from COVID himself," Vardhan said.

"In the last few days, I have been visiting various hospitals like AIIMS (Delhi), LNJP, RML, Safdarjung, AIIMS Jhajjar and now Rajiv Gandhi Super Specialty to review the preparedness of COVID-19 and I am satisfied with the arrangements made by these hospitals to deal effectively with the pandemic," he was quoted as saying the statement.

Commending nurses, doctors and other health care personnel for their resilience, hardwork and commitment in dealing with COVID-19, Vardhan said, "The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients has steadily increased from 8 per cent in the week ending March 29to 12 per cent this week.

"This shows that more and more of these patients are getting better and going back to their homes. It reflects the quality of care provided by our frontline health workers in India. I congratulate them for this success. The country is grateful to you for your services in such times. It is heartening to see the high morale of our health warriors in these testing times," he said.

Vardhan said the rate of growth of new cases has also been steadying for a while.

"Before the lockdown, India's doubling rate was about 3 days. As per the data received today by 8 AM, over the past seven days, the doubling rate is 7.2 days, for the past 14 days it is 6.2, and over the past 3 days it stands at 9.7.

"This is despite the fact that number of tests done every day has increased by almost 14 times. Same way, if you look at growth factor from March 15 to 31, it was 2.1, whereas in April it has come down to 1.2 which is a good drop of 40 per cent," he said.