Govt says weekend curfew, not lockdown, as Delhi logs 5.4k cases

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[google-translator]

Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain on Tuesday said that the weekend curfew imposed in the Capital in view of the spike in Covid-19 cases should not be treated as a lockdown, and the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) decided against sounding a “red alert” under the Graded Response Action Plan (Grap).

Delhi reported 5,481 latest Covid infections in the last 24 hours, pushing the positivity rate to 8.37%, the highest in since May 17 when it was 8.41%, according to the government data. Fresh cases have also pushed the number of active cases in the city to 14,889, the highest since May 27 when it was 16,378.

The Delhi government’s daily health bulletin said only 531 of the 9,042 dedicated Covid beds in the city were occupied, and these included some patients only “suspected” of having contracted the infection.

Experts have in recent days called for the hospitalisation rate to be used to judge the severity of the outbreak since the variant is likely to lead to milder disease and curbs that are disproportionate to the threat could end up hurting more than the epidemic.

DDMA on Tuesday held a review meeting of the ongoing curbs under the “yellow alert” of Grap in view of the steep growth in number of cases and the positivity rate. The agency added weekend curfew to the ongoing restrictions, but allowed 100% seating capacity in public transport in view of crowding which could have triggered faster transmission of the virus.

Currently, a night lockdown is in effect in Delhi between 10pm and 5am.
Currently, a night lockdown is in effect in Delhi between 10pm and 5am.

Talking to reporters about the latest DDMA order, Jain said, “A weekend curfew was being imposed in view of rising Covid cases, and it should not be considered as a lockdown. The curfew has been imposed as not much activity happens in that two-day period, and there is no need to panic.”

Currently, a night lockdown is in effect in Delhi between 10pm and 5am. The weekend curfew will begin at 10pm on Friday and end at 5am on Monday, according to the DDMA order.

On December 28, the DDMA announced closure of schools, colleges, movie theatres and gyms, and ordered markets and shopping malls to operate on an odd-even basis in view of the gatherings expected on New Year’s Eve.

However, despite the high infections, the hospitalisations so far have stayed low with more than 20,000 beds for Covid patients being vacant as of Tuesday, according to the Delhi government’s Covid dashboard.

On Monday, Jain said Omicron is now the dominant variant of Covid-19 in the capital, as many as 152 samples out of 187 sent for genome sequencing were found to be infected with the Omicron variant. “There are adequate number of hospital beds available in Delhi and there is no need to panic,” Jain said.

Oxygen monitoring

The Delhi government on Tuesday announced to install 100 telemetry devices — instruments that tell the real-time stock in liquid medical oxygen tanks — across at least 53 government and private hospitals in the city.

In a statement, the government said that while reviewing the supply of oxygen and keeping in mind the third wave of Covid-19, it was decided that telemetry devices in liquid medical oxygen tanks will be installed to monitor how much oxygen is available in which hospital, so that stocks can be replenished immediately.

“During the last wave of Covid-19, it was seen that there was a sudden shortage of oxygen in hospitals across the country and many hospitals sounded emergency when they started running out of medical oxygen. The government found it difficult to decide which hospital should be provided oxygen first and which hospital needed it the most,” the statement said.

It added, “At that time, the process of allocation of oxygen was being controlled by the central government, due to which it became very difficult to arrange oxygen for all the states.”

Liquid Medical Oxygen is high purity oxygen, used for medical treatment.

“The telemetry device will help in transmitting the live information of the amount of oxygen present in each liquid medical oxygen tank to the war room of the Delhi government. This will help in finding out how much oxygen is left in which hospital so that oxygen can be delivered to that hospital in time,” the statement said.

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