Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced opening of Delhi's borders from Monday.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today said the Delhi borders, sealed last week, will re-open on Monday. The move coincided with Delhi's decision to reserve its government hospitals and a chunk of private hospitals for its residents. Mr Kejriwal said the borders were sealed "thinking that our hospitals will be flooded with people from other states".
The week-long sealing, announced on June 1, came a day after a spike in coronavirus cases in Haryana.
A day before that, Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh had sealed its borders with Delhi, claiming a fresh surge of cases. Many of the patients, the district administration said, commuted to Delhi for work.
At the time, Mr Kejriwal said the borders were being shut temporarily to allow hospitals and medical institutions in the city time to get a handle on the increase in coronavirus cases.
Today, Mr Kejrwal said it was meant to keep patients from the suburbs away from Delhi hospitals and officially barred them, saying it was the suggestion of 90 per cent of the people of Delhi and an expert committee of five doctors.
Since the lockdown started in March, the interstate borders between Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have been sealed more than once, with the neighbouring states complaining that the movement to and from Delhi was responsible for the spread of infection.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court set a one-week deadline for the three states to come up with a common policy for inter-state movement in Delhi and the National Capital Region. A "consistent policy, one policy, one path and one portal" are required for the National Capital Region, the top court said.
The number of coronavirus patients in the city has been spiralling over the last week, registering a jump of more than a thousand patients each day. The total in the national capital has now crossed 27,000, the biggest jump so far was over 1,500.