Amid perilous shortage of beds and medical grade oxygen in Delhi hospitals fighting the COVID surge, the centre has assured all support to the city government at a meeting held to review preparedness to fight the second virulent coronavirus wave and the action taken by Union territories.
The high level review meet was chaired by Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla. The meeting, held through video conference, was also attended by: Rajesh Bhushan, Health Secretary; Dr V K Paul, Member (Health) NITI Aayog; Dr Balram Bhargava, Secretary, DHR & DG ICMR. The DGs of Police of all UTs were also present at the meet today.
"Delhi officials pointed out shortage of beds and oxygen in the meeting but they were assured of consistent help by centre," a senior official in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) told NDTV.
According to him, it was made clear that efforts are being made to augment both. "Central Government is helping Delhi in terms of infrastructure and support through the DRDO's recently operationalised COVID Hospital," he said, adding that officials representing Delhi government in fact expressed gratitude for the timely support of Union Government for augmenting the bed capacity in city hospitals.
Efforts to ramp up testing and reduce the turnaround time for the test results were also outlined by officials.
The Union Territories were asked to ramp up testing for COVID-19 and augment laboratory and hospital infrastructure to prepare for the next three weeks keeping in view the critical situation.
"All were asked to maintain constant vigilance against the grave situation in union territories," added an officer.
Strict enforcement of COVID appropriate behaviour was stressed along with stricter enforcement of movement restrictions and prohibition of large gatherings, regulated timings for markets, etc.
The Home Secretary pointed out the steep growth in the number of cases all across the country. From 20,000 cases reported on January 1, 2021, India has almost 10 times more cases (more than 2,00,000 cases) being reported daily since 15th April 2021. In last 11 days, new cases have almost doubled from 1.31 lakh reported on April 9 to 2.73 lakh reported on April 20.
Through a detailed and comprehensive presentation, the current trajectory of total new COVID cases, weekly tests, weekly positivity rate, weekly new COVID cases, weekly number of deaths and status/proportion of RT-PCR tests and Rapid Antigen Test in all Union Territories were presented.
The UTs listed their efforts for containment and management of the positive cases. Ladakh, J&K, and Lakshadweep pointed to the rise in cases due to large number of inbound travellers. Lakshadweep has seen a sudden spike after April 14.
Most UTs have imposed movement restrictions, including night curfew, restriction of intra-island movement.
Chandigarh informed that they are conducting door to door counselling for increasing vaccination. 90% of the patients are in home isolation and are being monitored by mobile teams.
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