Experts attribute lockdown as main factor behind fall in Delhi Covid cases

NEW DELHI:  Medical experts are of the view that the lockdown to be the main factor behind the dip amid the second wave of the pandemic. The national capital had registered 7,897 coronavirus cases on April 10 with 39 deaths, as per official data. On Friday, the fatality count stood at 289, with experts cautioning that even over 8,500 daily cases was “still a huge figure” and “severity of cases were still the same as before”.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, earlier in the day, said the city’s COVID-19 cases count in the last 24 hours was over 8,500 which was much lower than the figures reported on April 20, when it had crossed the 28,000-mark.

Doctors at leading government and private hospitals in Delhi said, there is a relative fall in number of cases, and “still a long way to go” before the daily count comes down to below 2,000-mark, as it was, a few months earlier.

“Lockdown, I would say is the biggest factor in arriving at a situation where we are now, when daily cases from 28,000 have come down to about 8,500. However, it is still a huge figure, and there should be no room for complacency, on any front,” Medical Director of Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital (RGSSH), B L Sherwal, said. RGSSH is a Delhi government-run 650-bed facility, and about 500 beds are earmarked for treating COVID patients, and 350 are currently occupied, most of them being ICU patients, he said.

“While daily cases have come down, the severity of infection is still the same, and new patients are being brought to our hospital in the same condition as before. Many of them are brought dead or die shortly after being brought to emergency. So, we must understand the gravity of the situation,” he added.
Delhi had been reeling under a brutal second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping the country.