The Centre on Tuesday directed Delhi and other Union Territories to plan augmentation of hospital infrastructure for next three weeks and ramp up testing and strict enforcement of Covid appropriate behaviour. The high-level meeting chaired by Union Home and Health Secretaries reviewed and discussed Covid status, and the management and response strategy with Chief Secretaries of all the Union Territories of India.
Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla pointed out the steep growth in a number of cases all across the country. From 20,000 cases reported on 1st January 2021, India has almost 10 times more cases (more than 2,00,000 cases) being reported daily since 15th April 2021. In the last 11 days, new cases have almost doubled from 1.31 lakh reported on 9th April to 2.73 lakh reported on 20th April.
“The UTs shared their present efforts for containment and management of the positive cases. Ladakh, J&K, and Lakshadweep pointed to the rise in cases due to a large number of inbound travelers. Lakshadweep has seen a sudden spike after 14th April, 2021 primarily due to travel of large number of people to mainland to shop for the recent festive occasions. Most UTs have imposed movement restrictions, including night curfew, restriction of intra-island movement in the island UTs. Chandigarh informed that they are conducting door to door counselling for increasing vaccination. 90% of the patients are in home isolation who are being monitored by mobile teams,” said Centre in a statement.
“UT of Delhi discussed shortage of beds and the present efforts to augment this through Central Government infrastructure and support through the DRDO’s recently operationalised COVID Hospital. Delhi Government expressed gratitude for the timely support of Union Government for augmenting their hospital beds capacity, during last year and this year. Their efforts to ramp up testing and reduce the turnaround time for the test results were also outlined,” it added.
Expressing concern over the worrying scenario, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and Dr V K Paul pointed out the criticality of next three weeks for COVID response measures. The UT administrators were advised to plan in advance for three weeks. A survey to promptly identify the COVID positive people should be taken up. Paul stressed on planning the minutest details of COVID management. For UT of Ladakh, he recommended regulation of the incoming labourers and supervised containment. Islands can be made large containment zones, he suggested.