Delhi is expected to add 20,000 cases to its coronavirus infection tally with a positivity rate of around 20% on Saturday, Health Minister Satyendar Jain said. he added that only 10% of hospital beds are occupied in the city, so far. "Delhi will report around 20,000 fresh cases today, positivity rate to rise by 1-2%. Currently, only 10% of hospital beds are occupied in the city," Jain said. He said till now there has been no Omicron variant-related death in the national capital.
Maintaining that the city government is well prepared, he said infrastructure has been augmented keeping in mind the high number of Covid cases.
"Currently hospital admissions are less. Earlier, when Delhi had 17,000 cases, the deaths were more than 200 on a daily basis but the deaths are lower this time. People are coming to hospitals for treatment of other disease and are being found positive (for Covid)," he said.
The minister said authorities have devised different levels of restrictions and alerts under the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) keeping in view the severity of infections caused by the Delta variant of coronavirus.
Jain reiterated that the high number of coronavirus infections is due to the increasing number of tests being conducted in the national capital.
Yesterday, Delhi recorded 17,335 fresh Covid cases, the highest single-day rise since May 8, and nine deaths while the positivity rate mounted to 17.73%.
The huge spike in fresh cases in the span of the last several days here is being recorded amid a significant jump in cases of the new Omicron variant of Covid in Delhi. The new fatalities raised the death toll from the pandemic to 25,136 in the national capital.
Amid surging coronavirus cases, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) will meet on Monday to discuss further restrictions, including 'total curfew', under the Graded Response Action plan.
The agenda of the meeting includes a review of the COVID-19 situation and preparation in the wake of rising Omicron cases in Delhi, a discussion on the implementation of GRAP (Level 4 Red), and a review of the vaccination programme.
The Red Alert is the topmost level of restrictions, including a total curfew, closure of all non-essential shops, Metro trains, government offices, except those dealing with essential services, under the four-stage Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) approved by DDMA.
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