Delhi High Court listed the matter for further hearing on February 1. (File)
The Delhi High Court Thursday asked the city government to apprise it of the position of COVID-19 new variant Omicron in the national capital, including how many patients are in ICU, on ventilator support and with oxygen beds in hospitals.
"We want to know the position of Omicron," a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said.
Senior advocate Rahul Mehra, representing the Delhi government, said he will get instructions and come back with the figures.
The court also sought to know as to out of the total number of COVID-19 patients in Delhi, how many are of Omicron, on ventilators, in ICU and with oxygen support in hospitals.
"So your Chief Minister is also down with COVID-19," the bench said. "What is the position otherwise? Hospitalisation is not much." Giving the statistics, Mr Mehra said there were 10,986 active cases of COVID-19 as on January 3.
He then said the period of home isolation has been now reduced to seven days from 10 and the governments, both central and state, are closely looking at the situation.
The high court listed the matter for further hearing on February 1.
During the hearing, Central government standing counsel Anurag Ahluwalia informed the court that the Centre has already come with the policy on 'precautionary dose' of COVID-19 vaccine.
The court said since the government has already declared the policy regarding 'precautionary dose', no further consideration on this aspect is called for at this stage.
The issue of whether to administer a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccines has cropped up amid the new Omicron variant of coronavirus.
The Centre had in December told the high court that expert bodies were deliberating on the need and justification for booster doses and at that time, there were no guidelines on it.