Delhi HC asks for figures on severe Covid-19 patients

New Delhi: As the third wave of Covid-19 continues its unprecedented surge, the Delhi High Court on Thursday got back to monitoring the situation in the Capital, asking the Delhi government to notify it of the position of the Omicron variant's spread here, including the number of Covid patients in ICU, on ventilator support and on oxygen support across city hospitals.

"We want to know the position of Omicron," a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said. Senior advocate Rahul Mehra, representing the Delhi government, said he will get instructions and come back with the figures.

The court also sought to know as to out of the total number of COVID-19 patients in Delhi, how many are of Omicron, on ventilators, in ICU and with oxygen support in hospitals. "So your Chief Minister is also down with COVID-19… What is the position otherwise? Hospitalisation is not much," the bench said.

Giving two-day old numbers, Mehra said there were 10,986 active cases of COVID-19 as on January 3. He then said the period of home isolation has been now reduced to seven days from 10 and the governments, both central and state, are closely looking at the situation. The high court listed the matter for further hearing on February 1.

During the hearing, Central government standing counsel Anurag Ahluwalia informed the court that the Centre has already come with the policy on the "precautionary dose" of COVID-19 vaccine. The court said since the government has already declared the policy regarding "precautionary dose", no further consideration on this aspect is called for at this stage.

The Centre had in December told the high court that expert bodies were deliberating on the need and justification for booster doses and at that time, there were no guidelines on it.

Significantly, the a bench of Chief Justice DN Patel had been constantly monitoring the Covid-19 scenario in the Capital since the outbreak began but the bench had in October last year, noted that both the Centre and the Delhi government had done enough to control the spread of the virus and ramp up health infrastructure in the two years of the pandemic and hence there was no need to continue monitoring the situation any longer.

"We see no reason to further monitor the case. Liberty is reserved with the petitioner to file proper litigation in case of difficulty," the court had said at the time.