Delhi L-G Anil Baijal forms expert panel to tackle COVID-19 in capital

NEW DELHI: With the state government receiving flak for ‘deteriorating’ health infrastructure from the Supreme Court, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal on Friday constituted an advisory committee of experts to suggest measures to deal with the pandemic.

The director-general of Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Balram Bhargava and the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Randeep Guleria are members of the panel. Other eminent members are Kamal Kishore and Krishna Vatsa of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMC), Dr Ravindran, additional deputy director-general of Directorate General Of Health (DGHS) and Dr Surjit Kumar Singh, who is the director of National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).

“The expert committee will give their opinion on various challenges being faced in Delhi in the prevention of the spread of COVID-19 and measures to ramp up medical infrastructure. The committee would also provide examples from global and national best practices,” said an official statement from the L-G office.
The development came two days after Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal met Union home minister Amit Shah to discuss the pandemic in the national capital.

The government had recently claimed that the city would require 1.5 lakh beds by July end and that corona cases would hit the 5.5 lakh mark by then.Earlier in the day, Baijal held a review meeting on containment zone management strategies with senior government Delhi police officials. The meeting was also attended by Kejriwal.

As a large number of Corona patients are in home isolation, the L-G advised district magistrates and deputy commissioners of police (DCsP) to engage resident welfare associations (RWAs) and volunteers for managing containment zones and enforcing preventive measures.

“All efforts should be made for timely response in terms of testing, triaging and shifting of patients to the required level of dedicated COVID facility to ensure proper medical care,” L-G told the officials.According to the government statistics, 77.8% of the active cases are recuperating in-home Isolation and more than 240 containment zones are active till June 11.

The officials present in the meeting said that the L-G further emphasised to break the chain of transmission and reduce the mortality rate of COVID-19.L-G said that ramping up bed capacity and medical resources should be our top most priority in handling the pandemic, informed an official.

Joint survey for containment zones

In a meeting attended by senior government officials of both State and Centre, a decision was taken to make sure that a joint survey is conducted by health department officials and police before declaring new containment zones so as to ensure strict implementation of lockdown rules.

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