Delhi Covid lockdown news live: AAP claims scam behind vaccine shortage

BJP president J P Nadda on Sunday took a dig at the Kejriwal government and claimed that AAP had been making baseless allegations against the Centre after its tall claims about hundreds of mohalla clinics and huge improvement in Delhi's health infrastructure lay exposed. “Today is ‘seva diwas’ and I don’t want to comment taking names, but there are certain people in Delhi who have been continuously defaming India for vaccines, they were making tall claims over mohalla clinics, were boasting about good administration and holding press conferences regularly,” Nadda said.

Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri on Sunday demanded a judicial probe into the deaths in hospitals of the Capital due to lack of oxygen. He also demanded a compensation of Rs 10 lakh instead of Rs 5 lakh announced by Delhi government for those who had died due to lack of oxygen supply. In a statement, Bidhuri said that a committee headed by a retired judge of the high court should be appointed so that action could be taken against those responsible for the deaths. Bidhuri also said that the Delhi Government should either pay the hospital bills of all such deceased people or reimburse them the amount. The Delhi government didn’t comment on the allegations.

After a month of Covid curfew, the UP government Sunday announced the easing of curbs from June 1 in 55 districts that currently have less than 600 active cases. Economic activities outside containment zones will be allowed five days a week for 12 hours (7am to 7pm) in these districts. The relaxations will, however, not be applicable in 20 districts, including Lucknow, Varanasi, GB Nagar and Ghaziabad. In the remaining districts, only night curfew will prevail. The lockdown was extended in Haryana, including Gurgaon and Faridabad, till June 7, but new guidelines allow malls and hotels to open.

With construction activities being allowed in the first phase of the gradual unlocking in Delhi, the municipal corporations have asked contractors to push pending projects, many of which have already missed several deadlines. The civic polls are due next year. South Delhi Municipal Corporation’s long-awaited Bharat Darshan Park, the north corporation’s Chandni Chowk car parking project and the east corporation’s Shahdara Jheelcum-recreational park project are among the prominent ones where work have stopped due to the migration of workers during the lockdown.

Aam Aadmi Party MLA Atishi on Sunday alleged a “vaccine scam”, claiming the central government was not providing vaccines to state governments inoculating people for free but giving sufficient supply to private hospitals and even five-star hotels immunising people at high rates. Atishi said that for a week, the vaccination of youth for free at Delhi government schools is halted due to scarcity of vaccines and they are getting vaccinated at private hospitals at rates ranging between Rs 900 and Rs 1,400 per dose. Five-star hotels are also providing packages that includes luxury of their hotels, she added. “What kind of a connivance is this of the Centre with the private hospitals and hotels?” she said.

After almost a month and a half of a stringent lockdown imposed to curb the exponential growth of Covid cases in Delhi, the gradual unlocking process starts on Monday. After the evening and weekend lockdowns, a complete lockdown has been in place since April19, which even saw Delhi Metro’s services getting suspended after initial restricted operations. Most restrictions, however, will continue as only factories and construction activities have been allowed to resume. Till 5am on Monday, construction work was allowed only where workers were residing onsite but now full-fledged construction activities can be started and workers travelling from other places will need e-passes to do so. Factories, however, were completely closed and will open after more than 40 days.

On Sunday, 78 Covid-19 fatalities were recorded over the past 24 hours with the figure dipping to two digits for the first time since April 13. While there were 946 new cases, this was the second day in a row that the figure remained below the 1,000-mark. The positivity rate marginally increased to 1.25% compared with Saturday’s 1.19%. On April 13, there were 81 deaths in 24 hours, but Sunday’s figure was the lowest since April 12, when the singleday toll was 72. The total number of deaths stood at 24,151, with just the last two months accounting for more than 13,000 of these fatalities.

The civic bodies carried out intensive sanitisation drives in industrial areas during the weekend, prior to the opening of these areas on Monday as part of the gradual unlocking of the city. Teams of the maintenance department were given specific tasks to cover all industrial areas under their jurisdictions. “While the sanitisation drive will continue, we will conduct meetings with the industrial associations to spread awareness and make sure they follow the Covid-19 norms,” said Jai Prakash, the mayor of North Delhi Municipal Corporation. It has also decided to identify and share a list of labour chowks and loading-unloading points with the Delhi Police so that they can help in preventing crowding of daily wagers or other workers at one point, Prakash added.