Amit Shah calls meeting to review spike in cases of Covid-19 in Delhi at 5pm today

New Delhi: Union home minister Amit Shah will hold a meeting on Sunday to review the spike in the number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in national capital Delhi. The meeting till take place at 5 pm today. Union health minister Harsh Vardhan, Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will attend the meeting.

According to people aware of the developments, the high-level meeting will discuss measure to control the spread of the disease. This is the second time that Shah is intervening after spike in the number of Covid-19 cases in Delhi. He had held a series of meetings in June-July when a major spike in Covid19 cases in Delhi. He had also visited several Covid-19 facilities at that time. Delhi reported 7,340 new Covid-19 cases and 96 deaths on Saturday, according to the bulletin released by the state government. With this, total cases in the national capital reached to 4,82,170.

There are 44,456 active cases in Delhi while 7,519 deaths have been reported. It logged the most single-day fatalities on Thursday and, a day earlier, the most number of new cases. The city’s hospitals have been swamped as active cases rose from 21,490 on October 13 to over 43,000 on November 13. Kejriwal had said on Friday that the third wave of the coronavirus disease outbreak in the city was likely to come under control in another 7-10 days.

“Whatever necessary steps are needed, we are taking them. There are steps we will take over the next few days, next week and we believe within the next 7-10 days, the outbreak will be brought under control,” the CM said in a video press conference. Experts, however, said they feared it might take longer for the city to turn the corner from its current peak. “By the current trends, it looks like cases can go up for at least another three weeks unless the government imposes certain restrictions on non-essential activities - that can concern market timings, size of gatherings, etc,” said Dr Lalit Kant, former head of the epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).