Delhi to get 6K ICU beds, 10 mobile testing labs

New Delhi: Announcing its plans to augment healthcare infrastructure in Delhi, the Central government on Tuesday said it is planning to nearly double the number of ICU beds here to 6,000 and deploy around 7,000-8,000 teams for house-to-house surveillance of active cases in containment zones and vulnerable pockets. Currently, around 3,000 teams are involved in surveillance. While the promise of doubling daily tests was reiterated by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, he added that the right mix of RT-PCR tests and antigen tests must also be ensured so that the pandemic can be dealt with effectively.

"A steady increase in the number of tests is crucial or else a huge number of people with infection might escape from our radar and it may result in further spread of the infection," he stressed.

Elaborating on the ICU beds, NITI Aayog member (health) Dr V K Paul, who also heads the National Task Force on COVID-19 said, "The capacity of ICU beds, which was 3,523 will be increased to over 6,000 in the 3 to 5 days. The Union government, Delhi government and private sector will jointly work to accomplish this."

"The arrangement of over 537 new ICU beds have been made at the 1,000-bedded Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel COVID facility operated by DRDO. The Delhi government is making arrangements for 2,680 ICU beds, and big hospitals under the Centre like Safdarjung and Lady Hardinge, in these also 45 beds will be increased. We have plans to increase ICU bed strength by 80 per cent," he said.

There is an immediate plan to activate 5,000 isolation and oxygen beds at Chattarpur Radha Soami Satsang Beas as an additional buffer in the NCR. Railways have made available around 1,000 beds which are acting as a reserve now, he said.

As for increasing daily tests, Dr Paul went on to explain that ICMR and Centre-run labs will be mobilised to test 10,000 additional samples daily and 10 mobile testing labs will be made functional in the next four to five days. "We will utilise the capacity of science and technology research institutes for testing too," he said.

"If cases go up higher, we plan to ramp up the manpower to monitor 35,000 to 40,000 active cases in home isolation at any given time. We have a plan along with the Delhi government on that," he said.

Paul urged people to get tested if they have any symptoms of COVID-19.

"The situation is such that we trace 16 people for every positive case in Delhi. It is the responsibility of citizens that if they come in contact of any positive person for more than 15 minutes they should go voluntarily in quarantine," he said.

"The kind of situation developing in Delhi the numbers we talked about is unsustainable and unprecedented. Be scared of it," he said, urging all to follow rules.