Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has extended the lockdown in the national capital to one more week as Covid-19 cases soar. “We had imposed a 6-day lockdown in Delhi. Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc. Public opinion is also that lockdown should extend. The lockdown will continue till next Monday,” he said.
Kejriwal also said that the Delhi government has started a portal where oxygen manufacturers, suppliers and hospitals will upload necessary information every two hours for better management of oxygen supply. He added that the central and state teams are working together to deal with the oxygen crisis.
Meanwhile, All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) chief Dr Randeep Guleria has said that lockdown is necessary in some parts of the country as Covid-19 cases continue to peak in India.
During an interview with a national news channel, Dr Guleria said that the country has more Covid-19 cases than it can handle. “The healthcare system is paying the price for the rise in infections. To my mind, we need a two-pronged attack. One is to improve the healthcare infrastructure - whether it is hospital beds or oxygen. The second thing to do is decrease the number of Covid-19 cases. We simply cannot continue to have such a large number of active cases,” he said.
Dr Guleria said that to reduce the daily Covid-19 cases there is a necessity to have a lockdown in places having a positivity rate higher than 10%. “If it is high then we need to have containment zones, even lockdown, so the transmission chain is broken, and the cases fall,” he explained.
Although Dr Guleria has suggested a lockdown, the Centre said that states must use lockdown as their last resort. India has broken its grim daily record with 3,49,691 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday. The healthcare system has taken a toll as many places have reportedly run out of oxygen leading to several Covid-19 patients succumbing to the deadly virus.
The oxygen crisis has hurt India’s fight against the second Covid-19 wave. Dr Guleria addressed the issue and said that there need to better allocation of resources. “The oxygen crisis is desperate as far as the national capital is concerned. We need to see how to allocate resources better. There are areas in the country where there is surplus, as the eastern parts. We need to move it from there to the central states,” he said.
