Delhi Covid situation worrisome: Kejriwal

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday identified high levels of air pollution as “one of the biggest factors” for the spike in Covid-19 infections, linking the two crises the Capital is currently reeling under, but said that the third wave of the coronavirus disease outbreak in the city was likely to come under control in another 7-10 days.

Kejriwal’s comments come at a time when the city has recorded persistently grim Covid numbers – it logged the most single-day fatalities on Thursday and, a day earlier, the most number of new cases. The city’s hospitals have been swamped as active cases rose from 21,490 on October 13 to over 43,000 on November 13.

At the same time, the air quality in the Capital has been several times over the safe limit for most of this month. For six days from November 6, it remained stayed in the “severe” zone – above 401 – with the reading at some monitoring centres maxing out.

“Whatever necessary steps are needed, we are taking them. There are steps we will take over the next few days, next week and we believe within the next 7-10 days, the outbreak will be brought under control,” the CM said in a video press confer

ence.

Kejriwal did not elaborate on the options being considered by the government to control the outbreak, but according to senior government officials who

asked not to be named, the administration has asked the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) to convene a meeting by Tuesday.

Experts said they feared it might take longer for the city to turn the corner from its current peak.

“By the current trends, it looks like cases can go up for at least another three weeks unless the government imposes certain restrictions on non-essential activities – that can concern market timings, size of gatherings, etc,” said Dr Lalit Kant, former head of the epidemiology and communicable diseases in the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

In his address, the CM spoke at length about the air quality crisis, which he said has played a big role in driving the epidemic. “One of the biggest reasons for Covid-19 spike in Delhi

is rise in pollution,” Kejriwal said.

The 24-hour air quality index according to Friday’s 4pm bulletin stood at 339, in the “very poor“category, worse than the 314 on Thursday, and weather experts expect the number to worsen over the weekend when at least some people are expected to defy bans to burst firecrackers.

“Even though we have forecast that this Diwali is likely to be better compared to the last few years, the weather is expected to be unfavourable. If people in the city burst crackers, then the pollution level could slip to ‘severe’ on Diwali day and a day after,” said VK Soni, head of IMD’s environment monitoring research centre.

The crisis prompted the National Green Tribunal to ban the use of firecrackers across the National Capital Region (NCR), a decision that was also based on research showing a strong link between Covid-19 severity and bad air quality.

“This time, the period of hazardous air seems to have arrived even before Diwali. The relationship of air pollution with severity of pneumonia is well established. Therefore, it is expected that there will be an increase in positivity and severity of Covid 19. Instead, all efforts should be made to curb pollution,” the tribunal said on November 9.

The air quality crisis has been an annual event for the last decade, Kejriwal said in his briefing on Friday as he devoted a sizable chunk to one of the major causes of air pollution: farm fires in the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Kejriwal shared results of an experiment with a bio decomposer – developed by the Pusa Institute – that can be used to dissolve crop stubble that farmers usually burn.

Last month, he said, the bio decomposer was spread over 2,000 acres of farm lands in Delhi and results of the experiment – based on samples collected from 24 villages -showed that 70%-95% of total crop stubble have been decomposed.

“Now we have a solution. I urge other states, the central government and the Supreme Court to take note of it. The Delhi government will file a petition along with this report to the central government’s air safety commission urging them to issue directions to states to use the bio decomposer,” said Kejriwal.