Delhi logs 2,948 cases; 66 deaths
Eight more banquet halls have been converted to COVID-19 facilities, adding 1,055 beds in the city
NEW DELHI: Delhi on Saturday reported 2,948 new COVID-19 cases after experiencing the highest single-day surge in cases for the last few days this week, taking the total tally here to above 80,000.
The Delhi government said that the Capital currently has 28,329 active cases, of which 17,381 are under home isolation. The total number of cases in the city now stands at 80,188. However, with 66 deaths added to the toll in the last 24 hours, COVID-19 fatalities here have reached 2,558. Moreover, as many as 49,301 patients have recovered so far with 2,210 of them having recovered in the last 24 hours. A total of 4,78,336 tests have been conducted as on Friday evening, as per the official health bulletin, with 19,180 tests conducted in the last 24 hours.
With continuous announcements of increasing bed capacity, the Delhi government also ordered the conversion of eight more banquet halls in the city, adding 1,055 more COVID-19 beds. These beds are expected to come up in the coming days with the banquet halls being tied-up to six hospitals across the Capital in order to provide health care services to COVID19 patients.
Of these, a 500-bedded COVID Care Centre at the CWG Village near Akshardham temple will be run by a volunteer group, ‘Doctors for You', making it the largest facility of its kind close to North East Delhi as the area has a high density of population, not allowing such a centre to be brought up there. Significantly, the number of containment zones in the city has increased to 315 and is expected to rise further with the revised containment strategy of redrawing these zones and aggressive surveying leading to additional discoveries of previously undetected clusters. And with increasing cases, the Delhi government also began the massive project of conducting a Serological survey of 20,000 residents in the city to map the epidemiological path of the virus, in the hopes that containment plans can be made stricter.
In other developments, Aam Aadmi Party MLA Raghav Chadha on Saturday visited a dispensary in his Rajinder Nagar constituency to inspect the distribution system of pulse oximeters to COVID19 patients recovering under home isolation. Chadha said, “In Delhi, COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms are mostly in home isolation. The Delhi government is giving oximeters to all these patients to check the oxygen levels and respiratory scale.”
He also said that one of the main issues faced by corona patients is that the oxygen level of patients goes down drastically and suddenly and they do not have enough time to get them to a hospital for medical attention. “These machines tell the oxygen level within a minute. The AAP government has advised all patients in home isolation to check their oxygen levels repeatedly every day. If any patient finds out that the oxygen level is decreasing the AAP government has advised the patients to immediately reach out to the Government. In such cases, the AAP government immediately provides an oxygen concentrator with a cylinder to the patient.”