5,023 new cases as SC set to hear plea to reserve private ICU beds

New Delhi: Consistently topping its highest daily spike almost every day last week, Delhi on Monday reported 5,023 new COVID-19 cases emerging out of the relatively lower 39,115 tests conducted in the last 24 hours. While the daily positivity rate had jumped to over 15 per cent on Sunday, it came down to 12.84 per cent on Monday.

And as COVID-19 beds and ICU beds continue to dwindle, the Supreme Court is set to hear the Delhi government's petition seeking a vacation of the stay ordered by the Delhi High Court on the direction that 80 per cent ICU beds in 33 private hospitals be reserved for COVID-19 patients.

The top court has listed the matter for hearing today (Tuesday) before a bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and BR Gavai. The hearing is expected to continue despite the fact that the court is currently on Diwali vacation.

The government has already challenged the single judge's stay order before a division bench of the high court which has listed it for hearing on November 27. While staying the Delhi government's order, the high court had come down heavily on it asking whether the non-COVID-19 patients have a right to life or not.

However, the Delhi government has argued that the initial petitioner in the case was motivated and that most of the private hospitals had already agreed to comply with the reservation direction.

As of Monday night, Delhi had around 8,084 COVID-19 beds vacant. In addition to this, only around 223 ICU beds with ventilators were vacant out of the 1,268 and 375 ICU beds without ventilators were vacant.

As the matter of reserving ICU beds in private hospitals goes to the top court, Delhi government figures showed that there were 427 ICU beds vacant in the city for non-COVID-19 patients at both government and private hospitals.

Monday's health bulletin showed that cases in Delhi had now reached over 4.43 lakh and total recoveries are nearing the 4-lakh-mark. A total of 71 deaths were on Monday added to the toll from the virus here, which climbed above the 7,000-mark to

7,060.