New Delhi: The national capital on Wednesday reported the highest single-day COVID-19 deaths at 131, taking its overall death toll to 7,943. And, as the national capital grapples with a spurt in the COVID-19 cases, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has called an emergency all-party meeting on Thursday to discuss the dire coronavirus situation in the region.
The government is also working to add 660 ICU beds in its hospitals in the next few days and the Railways will be providing coaches with 800 beds.
The recorded fatalities are the highest in a day coming in parallel to the alarming spike in cases in recent weeks. Delhi has witnessed a sharp spike in coronavirus cases lately, recording huge number of new cases each day than any other state in the country.
The highest single-day fatalities were reported in a day when Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia clarified that the Delhi government has no plan to impose a lockdown but will press some restrictions in market areas for some days to prevent the spread of COVID-19 cases. Soon after the Delhi government announced it would restrict the guests’ list in marriage ceremonies from 200 to only 50.
Meanwhile, the region also witnessed 7,486 new cases out of the 60,229 samples that were tested the previous day taking Delhi’s COVID infection tally to 5,03,084.
The Delhi Corona App showed that 1,236 out of 1,347 ventilator beds in dedicated ICU wards across the hospitals in the capital city are occupied, leaving a large waiting list for the patients to procure even a single bed. All the major private and government hospitals have shown full occupancy, as per the application.
As per the government data, 6,901 patients recovered from the deadly disease in the last 24 hours. Delhi’s test positivity rate stood at 11.71 per cent while the case fatality rate stood at 1.57 per cent.
The only silver lining is that the number of tests conducted crossed the 60,000-mark after days of testing abysmally low number of samples since the Diwali festivity started.
Currently, 9,343 out of 16,884 beds are occupied in the hospitals, 568 out of 8,217 beds in the dedicated Covid Care Centres and 219 out of 562 beds in the dedicated Covid Health Centres. Over 24,842 people are in home isolation. The number of containment zones has been raised to 4,444.
November is turning out to be the most precarious month for the national capital in managing the pandemic. The capital city is just halfway into the month, but it has already reported an alarming spike in the number of cases and deaths.
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday visited the state-government GTB Hospital to review the preparedness. He said that in a review meeting, the doctors have agreed to increase the strength of the ICU beds by 232, which means that the total number of ICU beds in GTB Hospital will go up to 400.
Around 663 beds will be increased in other Delhi government hospitals in the next few days. Apart from this, with the Centre assuring 750 additional ICU beds, around 1,400 beds will be increased across hospitals in Delhi in the coming few days.
He said that despite the huge spike in the number of cases, the doctors and nurses in Delhi are doing a commendable in treating corona patients.
Briefing the media after the hospital visit, Kejriwal said, “The corona cases have been rising in Delhi for the past few days, but overall, there is sufficient number of beds in the hospitals. If we leave some big private hospitals, there are adequate number of beds available in the government and private hospitals.”
(With agency inputs)