The recent Niti Aayog assessment declared the situation in Delhi as ‘unprecedented’ that could worsen in coming weeks with COVID-19 cases rising to 500 cases per million population from the current 361.
The National Capital is preparing itself to meet the demand for ICU beds, in a view of the possible surge. The Centre has suggested urgently increasing ICU bed capacity in Delhi to around 6,431, to handle the rise to 500 cases per million, reported Times of India.
The assessment was presented in a meeting convened by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and attended by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and senior central and state officials on Sunday.
As Delhi prepares to tackle the anticipated situation, as many as 1000 additional RT-PCR tests are set to augment the daily testing capacity from Tuesday. Besides, doctors and paramedical staff started arriving in Delhi on Monday to boost manpower at city hospitals treating COVID-19 cases.
The home ministry on Monday held consultations with DRDO and others to add ICU beds and also create more beds with oxygen facility at the 1000-bed Covid facility manned by ITBP in Chhatarpur. Around 250 beds are expected to be created at the DRDO hospital in the next four days.
‘An unprecedented situation has emerged in Delhi and this is likely to become worse in the coming weeks,’ said Dr Paul in the presentation. The estimates show there are around 9,839 isolation beds in Delhi with oxygen support. It has been suggested by the Centre to increase this capacity to at least 10,630 in order to tackle the current surge.
Around 75 central paramilitary doctors including 250 paramedics are coming in from various states- Assam, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan to Delhi, said the officials.
The officials claimed that the gross violation of COVID-appropriate behaviour over the last few weeks has led most people to become susceptible to the viral infection while deteriorating air quality has added to the misery. They said that the situation is likely to continue till March.
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