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Delhi Government imposes Weekend Curfew in the State, Struggles to Manage Resources as COVID-19 Cases Spike

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said stringent curbs have been reinstated to arrest the spread of Covid-19, which has put medical infrastructure and healthcare workers under tremendous strain.

Struggling to curb the rapid spread of the Coronavirus after recording over 17,282 cases and 104 deaths in the last 24 hours in its highest single-day spike, the Delhi Government on Thursday has imposed a Weekend Curfew in the State, adding to the pre-imposed night curfew from 10 am to 5 am.

Under the weekend curfew:

-Only essential services will be allowed to function
-Malls, spas, auditoriums, and gyms would be shut
-Cinema halls can function with 30% audiences on weekdays
-One weekly market per day per municipal zone will be allowed to operate
-Only takeaway services will be allowed in restaurants and dine-in operations will remain closed

Addressing the media, CM Arvind Kejriwal said, “Restrictions announced today are necessary to curb the spread of coronavirus in Delhi. Enforcement of COVID norms will be strictly implemented in public places”.

He added that weddings will not be affected and that e-passes will be given to facilitate movement during weekend curfew. The restrictions would also not be applied to people traveling to railway stations and airports.

Earlier this week, Delhi CM Kejriwal had maintained that lockdown was not the solution to control the spread of Coronavirus and had reinstated that it would be imposed only if the “hospital system collapses”. However, despite the CM’s assurance of there being no shortage of COVID-19 beds in Delhi hospitals as he said that “more than 5000 beds are available”, the ground reality is worrisome.

With the health infrastructure grappling to cope up with the rise in cases, the Delhi Government had ordered a majority of beds in 15 big private hospitals to be reserved exclusively for Covid-19 patients. Dr. Girdhar Gyani, director-general of the Association of Healthcare Providers India, said it was “absurd” and unfair that non-Covid patients should bear the consequences of what he called the Delhi government’s “failure” to adequately prepare the capital for a second wave, which has been battering Mumbai for almost a month.

“There are no ICU beds available in most big hospitals, both public and private. There is no sign of the outbreak ebbing either”, said a senior doctor at AIIMS, adding that if cases continue to grow at this rate, the city’s health infrastructure might collapse.

Adding to this, there are long waiting for lines just to get Covid-19 tests done at home. Several private laboratories in Delhi have stopped collecting swab samples to test people for Covid-19 infection due to the overload of the samples in recent days. The backlog is so heavy that many private labs prefer not to collect samples anymore. A glitch in data uploading two days ago also led to the delay in the test results of Covid-19.

Even crematoriums and graveyards are finding it hard to keep up as the Covid related deaths in the capital continue to rise. In Delhi’s biggest crematorium Nigambodh Ghat itself is witnessing double the number of cremations per day. Earlier where 15 cremations use to happen in a single day, the number has now risen to over 30 per day.

Senior doctors claim that the death count is high because people are reporting to hospitals at a very late stage. “Most people are dismissing their symptoms in the initial stage as cough or flu. It’s only when their condition deteriorates badly that they turn up at hospitals”.

However, many people queuing up outside Delhi hospitals have said that there is a delay in being admitted due to a lack of hospital beds. It is no secret that the authorities have greatly failed at managing the Covid-19 crisis and are now struggling to manage resources for the same.

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