New Delhi: Delhi Health Minister Sayendar Jain on Thursday said the COVID-19 situation in the city does not warrant a lockdown yet, even as the national Capital added over 15,000 new cases, six more deaths from the virus and the positivity rate shot up by over 3 percentage points in a day to 15.34 per cent.
And while the number of Covid-19 patients on oxygen support rose to over 1,000 on Thursday, the Health Minister reiterated that the
Omicron variant was mild and urged everyone to isolate at home and only visit hospitals when serious symptoms emerge. He added that
the city has not reported any death due to the Omicron variant so far.
Delhi has logged 29 deaths due to the disease since it reported the first case of the new variant on December 5. Jain asserted Delhi is in a comfortable position in terms of hospital bed occupancy. He said the number of cases in Delhi is high as a large number of people are being tested for the infection.
"We have been conducting a large number of tests. If we do not do that, the new cases can reduce to 500-1,000. A lot of people (states) do not conduct tests and say they do not have cases. We have been transparent... We are conducting the maximum number of tests in the country," he said.
Authorities conducted around 90,000 tests on Tuesday and around 98,000 tests on Wednesday in the city, according to government data. Asked if the AAP government was considering a lockdown in the city, Jain said Delhi has already taken stringent actions, including imposing night curfew and weekend curfew, which are sufficient for the time being. There is no need for a lockdown right now, he said.
Even as hospital bed data from the Delhi Corona app and the health bulletin are failing to match, Jain justified this by saying "most beds in hospitals have been converted into oxygenated beds". "If there are patients on such beds, it does not mean they require oxygen. Similarly, if a patient is on a ventilator bed, it does not mean they require ventilator support," he added.
According to the Delhi Corona app, as of 11:20 pm on Thursday night 1,156
Oxygen beds were occupied in city hospitals and 203 ICU beds were occupied.
According to the application, there are around 11,000 oxygen beds vacant in the city as of Thursday night and the vacancies for ICU and ICU ventilator beds were at 3,355 and 1,603 respectively.
Active cases in the city have now breached the 31,000-mark with the death toll further rising on Thursday to 25,127.