Jain said the government has made preparations to operationalise 12,000 ICU beds if the third wave of Covid cases hits the city. The next phase of the sero survey will soon be conducted in Delhi, health minister Satyendar Jain said on Tuesday. The previous sero survey was conducted in January, in which Covid antibodies were found in 56.13 per cent of the people screened.
He also said that cases owing to the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus should not be a cause of concern since India had already “faced the wrath” of the variant during the second wave in April and May.
“In the tests done during the second wave, we saw that more than 80% of the samples showed the presence of the Delta variant. The genome sequencing of the samples during the second wave and post the second wave have also been done. The results of both show that about 80% of the sample population was infected by the Delta variant of the virus. Since the Delta variant originated in India, we have already faced the wrath of this variant during the second wave… Therefore, I don’t think that the Delta variant should be a cause of concern anymore for us as the entire second wave was of the Delta variant,” Jain said.
Jain said the government has made preparations to operationalise 12,000 ICU beds if the third wave of Covid cases hits the city. “In the last wave, the Delhi government had prepared 22,000-23,000 beds, out of which 6,000 were ICU beds. This time around we have doubled the number of ICU beds and have added more beds overall as well (37,000). Along with this, the Delhi government has started a Graded Response System,” he said.
Under the graded response system, shutting down markets or gyms, etc, are done based on positivity rate, number of cases and hospital bed availability.
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