COVID-19 How Delhi's Dilshad Garden is winning the battle

Tracing the footsteps of the “non-cooperative” son of a COVID-19 patient, checking CCTV footage to find out people who could have come in contact, 123 medical teams on the ground visiting 4,032 houses and screening around 15,000 people and imposing curfew — this in nutshell describes how Dilshad Garden was saved from a massive outbreak of virus after a 38-year-old Gulf-returnee tested positive.

The Delhi administration was on its toes as eight people, including four from the woman’s family, tested positive in northeast Delhi’s Dilshad Garden for COVID-19 by the third week of March. It was then the Delhi government put in place ‘Operation SHIELD’ — its strategy of sealing, home quarantine, isolation and tracking, essential supply, local sanitisation and door-to-door checking to contain virus infection in a locality that could turn a hotspot — for the first time in the capital. The results are encouraging as the last 10 days has seen not a single case in Dilshad Garden.

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All started with the return of a woman with her 19-year-old son from Saudi Arabia on March 10 after visiting her husband. Two days later, she developed fever and cough and met a doctor at a local clinic. However, she was taken to Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) Hospital on March 15 and subsequently to Ram Manohar Lohia hospital where she tested positive for COVID-19. On March 18, a day after results confirmed virus infections, authorities traced 81 people who met her while in the next four days, five people — her mother, brother, two daughters and the local doctor — tested positive.

“I feared a massive COVID-19 outbreak in Dilshad Garden. The hard work of the health officials and the successful implementation of the Operation SHIELD made Dilshad Garden COVID-19 free,” Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain said on Friday.

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Soon after the eight were tested positive, Dilshad Garden was declared a containment zone and authorities started tracing people who came in touch with her. “Her son was not very cooperative, so we had to seek the help of the local police to get information. We also used footage from the CCTV cameras installed near their home to identify some people who needed to be put under surveillance,” Dr S K Nayak, a district administration officer who led the operations, said. Nine of the 11 entry points that led to Dilshad Garden Sector L were shut. Not even essential services were permitted while the public address system was used to urge residents to come out for testing if they had met the family of the 38-year-old woman.