Every fifth coronavirus ( COVID-19 ) death in India is from the national capital, the Congress pointed out on Tuesday and asked the Delhi government to consider a total lockdown of markets instead of partial lockdown and encourage people to work from home.
Congress general secretary Ajay Maken told reporters at a virtual press conference that the rate of infection in Delhi could go up to 15,000 a day as per a report of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and about 20 % of the cases may need hospitalisation.
Attacking the Arvind Kejriwal government, he said that “instead of spending ₹32 crore on Diwali bash, the government could have spent the money on adding 600 intensive care units (ICU) beds in government hospitals”.
“My personal opinion is that we could have done without celebrating Diwali this way as for many people, this will be the last Diwali,” he stated.
Mr. Maken claimed that the situation in Delhi alone was worse than countries such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, and yet the State government was reducing the number of tests conducted.
Blames Centre too
He also blamed the Centre for the current situation with regard to the spread of the virus in Delhi that has witnessed a third wave.
“I just wanted to share some statistics. For every10 lakh people, there are 6,407 COVID-19 cases, while in the Delhi, the figure is 29,140 cases. If you look at the death rate, Delhi has a figure of 459 deaths per million, while in Rajasthan, the figure is 30 deaths per million,” he said.
The Delhi government’s proposal to selectively lock down markets would not work as the infection also spreaded from customers and they would move from one market to another.
“There can’t be a worse policy than this... No doubt markets are hot spots but they are also because of the customers. If you lock down one market, customers will go to another. This way, you are shifting one hotspot to another. This cant work as Odd-Even scheme,” he noted.
Disputing Health Minister Satyender Jain’s claim that Delhi had gone past the peak of the third wave, he said the government should encourage work from home and also consider shutting down transport services, including the Metro.
“Since the virus spreads also because of the Metro, you should take a view on it. Our view is that either you completely shut it down or run it as usual. Our view is that don’t adopt partial approach,” he added.
