Delhi is expected to have around 5.5 lakh COVID-19 cases by July 31, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said on Tuesday after a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) chaired by Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal.
Mr. Sisodia also said that Central government officials have maintained that there is no community transmission of the virus in Delhi.
Before the DDMA meeting, Health Minister Satyendar Jain had told reporters, “We say community spread when people don’t know how they got the infection. In 50% of the cases in Delhi, the source of infection is not known.”
“We can’t declare community spread, it is the ambit of the Central government. But I can tell you that there are a lot of cases where the source cannot be found,” the Minister had said.
Blame-game politics
In a clear sign that blame-game politics over mushrooming COVID-19 cases in the Capital has begun, Mr. Sisodia said the L-G’s move to overturn the Aam Aadmi Party government’s decision to reserve private and State-run hospitals for “Delhi residents” has created a major crisis. “We had raised the issues in the DDMA’s meeting. We urged him [Mr. Baijal] to reconsider his decision, but he did not accept it,” Mr. Sisodia told reporters after the meeting.
“In the meeting today it was discussed that by June 15 there will be 44,000 cases in Delhi and 6,600 beds will be needed. By June 30, there will be one lakh cases and 15,000 beds will be needed. By July 15, there will be around 2.25 lakh cases and 33,000 beds will be needed. By July 31, there will be 5.5 lakh cases and around 80,000 beds will be needed,” Mr. Sisodia said. The estimation is based on a report submitted last week by a five-member committee appointed by the Delhi government.
“When we asked L-G Sir that before overturning the decision [of the Delhi government] he must have done some calculation on how much the cases will increase and how many cases will come from outside, he did not have any idea about it,” the Deputy CM said.
