With the national capital witnessing a big spike in Covid-19 cases, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday chaired a meeting to review the situation in Delhi and assured the Arvind Kejriwal government of 750 ICU beds at the DRDO centre. Shah announced several measures, including doubling of RT-PCR tests and strengthening medical infrastructure to bring the city’s rising Covid cases under control.
“Today many directions were given in the meeting. 1- RT-PCR tests will be doubled in Delhi. 2- In Delhi, mobile testing vans of the ICMR of health ministry will be deployed in places vulnerable to Covid-19 spread by using maximum capacity of labs,” Shah tweeted.
CM Kejriwal also briefed the media, saying: “Covid cases have been sharply rising ever since October 30. We still have a decent number of Covid beds, but ICU beds are fast getting exhausted. The Centre said that 500 ICU beds will be made available in the DRDO centre in the next couple days and additionally another 250 in the coming days.”
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain also participated in the meet at North Block.
Taking to Twitter, the Home Minister said that some MCD hospitals will be converted into dedicated Covid hospitals to treat patients with mild symptoms. He said that capacity of hospitals in Delhi and other medical infrastructure should be increased. “In this direction, 250 to 300 ICU beds will be included in DRDO Covid Hospital located in Dhaula Kuan which was set up in May so that serious Covid-19 patients can be treated there,” the Union minister said.
Shah said that the 10,000-bed Covid Centre at Chhatarpur will be strengthened further and the number of beds with oxygen facility will be increased. Dedicated teams will visit all private hospitals to check the availability of Covid-19 related medical infrastructure and to inspect the condition of patients, he said.
Meanwhile, Delhi saw a dip in daily Covid cases. It recorded 3,235 fresh cases on Sunday, taking the infection tally in the national capital to over 4.85 lakh on Sunday, while the positivity rate climbed to 15.33 percent. 95 more fatalities pushed the death toll to 7,614.
Nationwide, 41,100 new cases of Covid-19 were recorded on Sunday, taking the overall national tally to 88,14,579. 447 new fatalities were also recorded in the last 24 hours. The total death toll has now reached 1,29,635. The number of active cases yet again stayed below the 5 lakh-mark at 4,79,216. 82,05,728 patients have also been discharged from the hospitals. This is the seventh day in a row that the daily caseload has stayed below 50,000.
The health ministry tweeted on Sunday that there has been a continuous decline in average daily cases for the last five weeks. It also shared a graph which showed the daily new cases from October 3 to November 13. A little over 75 percent of the new recovered cases are from just 10 states and union territories, and a similar number of states has contributed to 76.38% of the new cases.
The 10 states reporting the maximum Covid-19 cases so far in the country are Delhi, Kerala, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. These fresh coronavirus cases were detected from 21,098 tests conducted the previous day, the lowest since August 14, when 14,389 tests were done. Of the total tests conducted, 11,877 were rapid-antigen tests, and 9, 221 were RT-PCR tests.
Haryana reported another 1,957 new cases of coronavirus infections and eight deaths in 24 hours on Sunday, taking the cumulative number of positive cases in the state to 1,99,874 and 2,019 deaths. Among the eight patients who died in the last 24 hours, three died in Bhiwani, two in Faridabad, and one each in Gurgaon, Sonipat and Sirsa. The number of active Covid-19 patients in the state reached 19,557. Among the active cases, there were 334 patients in a critical condition, out of whom, 42 were on ventilator support while 292 were on oxygen support. Gurgaon and Faridabad continued to witness a surge amid the ongoing festive season, as Faridabad added 643 new Covid-19 patients and Gurgaon added 515 in the last 24 hours. However, in the same period, 1,930 patients also recovered, taking the total number of recovered patients in the state to 1,78,298 and recovery rate to 89.21 percent.
Mumbai reported 726 new cases of coronavirus and 16 deaths on Saturday. 2,69,130 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the city so far, including 2,44,659 recoveries and 10,555 fatalities. There are 10,077 active cases at present. Maharashtra›s COVID-19 deaths remained on the higher side, while the recovery rate dropped marginally with an increase in the number of active cases for the first time in over a week. The state witnessed 105 deaths taking the death toll to 45,914. The state also reported 4,237 fresh cases, taking its overall tally to 17,44,698.
Telangana reported 661 new coronavirus cases, 1,637 recoveries and 3 deaths on Saturday. The total number of cases now stand at 2,57,374 including 2,40,545 recoveries, 15,425 active cases and 1,404 deaths.
Jharkhand reported 154 new cases (out of 10,693 tests) and 328 recoveries yesterday. With this, the state’s total cases reached 1,05,935 including 1,01,897 recoveries or discharges, 922 deaths and 3116 active cases.
Mizoram reports 25 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the total cases to 3,393. A total of 2,820 people have been discharged in the state, after recovering from the infection. The state also recorded 4 deaths. Active cases now stand at 569.
