On Thursday, the High Court of Delhi criticised the Delhi Govt saying it has gone “completely haywire” over its handling of the Coronavirus outbreak & that Delhi was on its way to becoming the “corona capital of the country”, as the 3rd wave of infections in the city continued to create alarm.
While new infections in Delhi have been rising at a steep rate, another worrying trend has emerged as deaths & hospitalisations have begun rapidly climbing too. According to Thursday’s bulletin, 66 people lost their lives due to the COVID-19 — the highest single-day deaths in over 4 months. Delhi last recorded 66 deaths on June 27, at a time when treatment protocols for Covid-19 were still being assessed.
On Thursday, a bench of justices Hima Kohli & Subramonium Prasad said that “Delhi government has gone completely haywire on the pandemic & is soon going to become the corona capital of the country thanks to the number of cases shooting up. Many claims were made by the Delhi government that they are topping charts in testing, but the number of cases has overshot. The government has many answers to give us".
Several indicators now reinforce the fact that Delhi is in the grip of its 3rd & worst wave of infections yet. In the past week, there were 5,843 cases on average every day, the highest this number has been since the first case was recorded on March 2. Delhi now has 416,653 total infections & 6,769 deaths.
The HC’s comments came during a hearing on a group of pleas relating to the disbursal of salaries to the employees & former employees of the various civic bodies.
It said that the Govt of Delhi has taken the health of citizens for a ride, a matter which would be dealt with separately on Nov 11 when the bench hears a plea by advocate Rakesh Malhotra, who had sought to ramp up of tests in the city.
Most of the new cases of Covid-19 are being reported from 6 districts – North, Central, North East, East, North West & South East – where the positivity rate stands between 12% & 14%, said Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan after a review of the situation in Delhi.
Dr Puneet Mishra, professor of community medicine at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) said that “This time around, the cases are being reported from middle income neighbourhoods. These are people who stayed at home & remained in isolation during the lockdown".
Delhi’s average 7-day positivity rate currently stands at 11.5 per cent, as against the national average of 4.3 per cent.
HOSPITALISATIONS AT ALL-TIME HIGH
As on Thursday, there were over 38,000 people with active infections in the city. Of them, 7,231 patients were admitted to hospitals, the data shows. This is the highest hospitalisations at a given time the city has seen.
Intensive care unit beds are running full in city hospitals, especially those at private hospitals. Over 73.5% of all the ICU beds earmarked for the treatment of Covid-19 in the city were occupied as on Thursday evening, according to the ‘Delhi Corona’ app.
On Thursday, CM Arvind Kejriwal said the Govt is working on increasing oxygen & ICU beds, & has reached out to the Apex Court to reserve ICU beds in private hospitals.
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