A story on the $13 (or less) device that is helping Delhi fight the coronavirus.
Delhi’s govt has so far distributed pulse oximeters to more than 32,000 people for free, putting them at the heart of its home isolation plan.
in.reuters.com/article/us-hea…
The home isolation plan was devised in May, when the city's COVID-19 cases started spiking and hospital beds running short.
“If we hadn’t done this, there would’ve been no room to even stand in our hospitals,” Delhi’s health minister @SatyendarJain told me in an interview.
But health authorities started noticing “happy hypoxemia” - low blood oxygen levels without any breathlessness - that was leading to complications in coronavirus patients isolated at home.
That's where the cheap pulse oximeters came into play.
Twice a day, health worker Kamal Kumari receives a flurry of WhatsApp messages from coronavirus patients with their oxygen level readings.
"Now we can find out in time and safely refer patients to the hospital," she told me, before kitting out in PPE and heading out.
There are issues: cheap oximeters may well malfunction, or patients may not know how to use the device properly.
But the health minister said there hasn't been a single fatality among the thousands of patients in home isolation the last month and a half.
Full story here, with pictures by the inimitable @adnanabidi:
in.reuters.com/article/us-hea…
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