Meeting on reopening of hotels & gyms tomorrow

New Delhi: After weeks of no word on whether Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal's veto of Delhi government's decision to reopen gyms, hotels and weekly markets would be reversed, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority is set to discuss the issue at its next meeting, scheduled for August 18 (Tuesday).

According to the meeting notice, key points for discussion in the meeting would include reviewing the decision regarding bans on hotels, gyms, and weekly markets; delinking of banquet halls from hospitals and reviewing the limit of passengers in public transport and DTC buses among other pertinent pandemic related issues.

Significantly, the Delhi government has made at least three representations to the L-G's office and Union Home Minister Amit Shah's office regarding the review of Baijal's overruling of the decision. One health department official said, "The health department will first give a presentation on the corona situation and accordingly decisions will be taken."

Meanwhile, the Capital on Sunday recorded 652 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total tally here to 1,52,580. The city also added eight deaths to its toll, taking the total fatalities from the disease here to 4,196.

Delhi currently has 10,823 active cases, of which 5,762 are recovering in home isolation.

However, health minister Satyendar Jain on Sunday said that the positivity had significantly reduced and that Delhi was in a much better place compared to a time when there were around 2,000-3,000 daily cases.

Data from this month shows the daily positivity rate has averaged around 6.44 per cent with the highest daily positivity rate recorded on August 3 at 7.94 per cent.

Sunday's data showed 1,310 people had recovered from the disease and that 10,709 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours. Interestingly, til now, Delhi has tested above 20,000 samples in a day only on four days this month.