Delhi records 24,000 COVID cases in a day; Kejriwal calls situation ‘alarming’

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday (April 17) sounded the alarm bells when he said the national capital is short of hospital beds, oxygen and the vital Remdesivir injections even as the city touched 24,000 new cases in the last 24 hours.

“Cases are going up very fast hence we are facing shortage of every essential medical facility…this when everything looked under control just a few days ago. I am worried about the speed at which the coronavirus is spreading. No one knows where it will stop,” Kejriwal said.

What’s alarming is that Delhi’s positivity rate has touched 25 percent, which means 25 in every 100 people tested are turning out positive.

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Kejriwal sounded helpless as he said that Delhi has reached its limits when it comes to expanding its health infrastructure. “The Delhi government is trying its best to increase the number of beds. I am hopeful that 6,000 more beds will be added in the next two to four days,” he said.

Delhi is one of the many cities in the country struggling to cope with the pandemic as the national tally in the last 24 hours crossed 2.34 lakh infections in the last 24 hours. Kejriwal had so far refused to impose a full-fledged lockdown though it had a weekend lockdown in place to contain the virus which has just ran amok with people struggling to get the required medicines and hospital beds for emergency patients. In a recent order, the Delhi CM ordered closure of all services, except the essential ones.

India has recorded more than 20 lakh new cases in the first 16 days of April. With 2.34 lakh fresh cases on Saturday, the overall national tally has gone past 1.45 crore with a total of 175,649 deaths so far.

The International Red Cross has called the sudden rise as “truly frightening”. India now has three times the daily cases of the United States, which still remains the worst-hit country in the world.