Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said the government was scaling up infrastructure to deal with the third wave of the pandemic and putting arrangements in place to deal with even 30,000 daily cases.
He said the people of Delhi need not worry even as he said he hoped the peak of the second wave has passed. Mr. Kejriwal made the comments while he and Health Minister Satyendar Jain were inspecting an upcoming COVID Care Centre at the Ramlila Ground near GTB Hospital.
The Chief Minister said 500 ICU beds will be ready for use at the facility by Tuesday and 500 ICU beds would be available at the Ramlila Ground near Lok Nayak Hospital over the coming days.
The Chief Minister said he hoped these 1,000 operational ICU beds will meet the needs of Delhi.
The Delhi government was also increasing the number of oxygen beds and by Monday evening, expected to receive 1,000 oxygen cylinders. Additional oxygen cylinders were expected to arrive over the coming three to four days, he said.
“We are creating new oxygen beds across the city, and hope that Delhi will no longer see any shortage. Oxygen tanks have been installed outside and are to expend 22MT oxygen, which is expected to reduce the scarcity of oxygen,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
“We should certainly prepare for the third wave, for which we will have to further expand our infrastructure. Delhi witnessed a wave in November when 8,500 cases emerged. With this wave, we touched a maximum of 28,000 cases, which brought our entire infrastructure under duress,” the Chief Minister said.
Ready to deal 30K cases
However, the Chief Minister said the scale at which the government was preparing its infrastructure, it would be ready to deal with a situation where even 30,000 cases emerged on a daily basis.
Mr. Kejriwal said the government, at its end, wanted preparations in place should the cases suddenly begin to increase from tomorrow. “Nobody can predict anything. If the cases begin to increase, we are prepared and the people need not be worried,” he said.
