CM Kejriwal says no COVID-19 deaths at LNJP Hospital even before test results come in; 3 fatalities reported

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted on Tuesday that there were no deaths in the national Capital’s first COVID-designated healthcare facility Lok Nayak Hospital on Monday, July 27. However, the Chief Minister was misrepresenting facts. There were three deaths in the hospital – two were of COVID-suspected patients and one had tested negative for Coronavirus. All three of them had COVID-19 symptoms. It must be reiterated that LN Hospital only admits patients showing symptoms of COVID-19.

The Chief Minister could have meant that there were no COVID-19 positive deaths at LN Hospital, but that is also stretching the truth as the death certificates of two of those patients clearly mention COVID-19-suspected death. Moreover, their RT-PCR test reports hadn’t come back from the lab either till the night of Tuesday, July 28.

Of the three (two men and a woman) who had died, two were in the medicine ward and one was admitted in the surgery ward of the hospital. All three of them were on the COVID-19 treatment regime.

36-year-old Sanjay (name changed to protect identity) was found on the road and was first taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. Then, he was referred to LN Hospital on July 25 due to non-availability of beds in the COVID-19 ward. The patient had SARI symptoms: shortness of breath, cough with mucus secretions, reduced appetite, low blood pressure and higher pulse rate.

The patient was administered a single dose of Dexamethasone, which is usually given to stabilise breathing to Covid-19 patients. World Health Organisation had welcomed the use of this drug as it is an immunosuppressive drug which counteracts the body’s heightened inflammatory response to COVID-19. The patient eventually died on July 27 as a result of cardiac arrest.

65-year-old Mala (name changed to protect identity) was admitted to the hospital on July 26 in a serious condition, though her condition had begun to worsen on Friday, July 24. She had extreme shortness of breath and the oxygen level in the blood had dropped to 80%. She was on oxygen support. She had co-morbidities including diabetes and had undergone a heart bypass surgery. She died within a day of being admitted to the hospital.

Even though 42-year-old Rajendra (name changed to protect identity) had tested negative for COVID-19, he had severe cough and shortness of breath. He was admitted to the hospital on July 23 and was initially administered zinc, vitamin C and ecosporin, which helps prevent the formation of blood clots. One of the causes of his death is type 1 respiratory failure, which in layman terms can be defined as low level of oxygen in the blood. He had comorbidities including hypertension, chronic kidney disease and dilated cardiomyopathy.

“We are not sure why the Chief Minister made that statement. We are not sure yet of the other two patients. Even the patient who died had COVID-19 symptoms. In the last one week, there have been delays in getting RT-PCR test reports from the hospital lab. The results of the swab tests done on July 24 have just come in,” said a doctor at the hospital, who did not want to be identified.

This misleading announcement from the Delhi Chief Minister has come at time when the Delhi High Court had pulled up the Delhi government on Monday, July 27, for testing a large number of patients using Rapid Antigen Test kits even though it had a high rate of false negatives. The Delhi government has conducted 1,21,950 RAT tests between July 15 and July 23. Even though Delhi (private and public labs combined) has the capacity to conduct 11,000 RT-PCR tests each day to detect COVID-19 cases, less than 6,000 RT-PCR tests were done during the same period.

On July 28, Delhi recorded 1,056 positive cases and the total number of cases in the capital was 1,32,275. The death toll touched 3,881, while on Tuesday 28 deaths were recorded.