Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that in two meetings with officers on Friday, it was decided to make base-level preparations for 37,000 cases.
“If cases are more than this, we will have arrangements for that as well. All calculations for beds, ICUs, children beds, oxygen and medicines are being done on the basis of this projection. A paediatric task force has also been created for preparations for children who might fall ill. For example, out of the total ICU beds, how many should be for children will be worked out. The equipment for this will be different, such as masks for their use specifically,” he said.
Over the past 14 days, covid cases rate in Delhi have declined rapidly. On Saturday,
around 400 cases with a positivity rate of 0.5 per cent had been recorded in the past 24 hours.
A Pediatric Task Force has been formed separately in Delhi which will decide how many ICU beds should be there, how many should be for children and what kind of beds should be for children too. With this, everything will be different for them .
“Hospitals were not getting oxygen, people were not getting beds, there was a lot of struggle. Ultimately, after the intervention of the Supreme Court and cooperation from the Centre, we got oxygen but till we did not, there was panic everywhere. If the next wave comes, we don’t want a similar situation again and it has been decided to build oxygen storage capacity of 420 metric tonnes. Indraprastha Gas Limited has been asked to set up a 150 tonne oxygen production plant. They have said it will take 18 months, but we have to start somewhere,” said Kejriwal.
“We are buying 25 tankers, and 64 small oxygen plants are being set up. The process is underway. We hope they will be ready in the next two months… We are also buying oxygen cylinders and concentrators… We are also looking at medicines and have seen that people have been sharing names of medicines on WhatsApp and then those start to go out of the market. A committee of doctors and experts will be formed and they will say whether the medicine will help in managing Covid. We will then try procuring it. If the medicine is not useful, we will start an awareness campaign about it so that people don’t run needlessly. The second thing is that a list of the important medicines has been made. We will make a buffer stock for these medicines,” the CM said.
Delhi is also in the process of setting up two genome sequencing labs, Kejriwal adds.
“These labs will be set up at Lok Nayak Hospital and ILBS Hospital so that we also know about the variant in Delhi. If it is the old one or a new one,” Kejriwal said.
