Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday chaired a high-level meeting on the current situation of COVID-19 in Delhi where he directed officials concerned to ensure all eligible people in the city are vaccinated within the next three months.
The government said that at the meeting, Mr. Kejriwal told the officials that following the improvement in the situation of oxygen in Delhi, there should be no death due to oxygen shortage.
The government said that he also directed all District Magistrates to pay surprise visits to vaccination centres and relief camps in order to review the preparations for the convenience of the people.
“Now that Delhi has received oxygen, no one in Delhi should suffer due to shortage of oxygen. All the hospitals in Delhi should increase their beds and every DM should arrange new oxygen beds in their districts so that no deaths happen due to lack of oxygen,” Mr. Kejriwal was quoted as having said at the meeting.
“The hampering of oxygen distribution has to be corrected so that there is no disruption in its supply. We have to try to prevent oxygen wastage and save as much oxygen as we can. If we can, we should save oxygen and return it to the Central government so that it can be used somewhere else,” he also said.
The 48 oxygen plants coming up across Delhi, the Chief Minister said, should be installed immediately. These plants have an oxygen production capacity of 40 tonnes and will further help in improving Delhi’s oxygen situation, he said.
The Delhi government, he said, had to prepare long-term plans and build the capacity of oxygen storage on a very large scale in the city as well as create a special storage capacity for oxygen.
At the meeting, the government stated, the officials concerned told Mr. Kejriwal that the biggest difficulty at present was supplying oxygen and that the companies doing so should be asked to supply oxygen at the earliest.
The Chief Minister, according to the government, expressed displeasure at patients in home isolation not being given oximeters at home and directed that it should be ensured that oximeters are given to all such patients recovering from COVID in home isolation.
“We will be able to stop the third wave of COVID from coming to Delhi only by being able to administer vaccines to everyone in Delhi as soon as possible in the next three months,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
“We need to recruit retired doctors, nurses, and medical staffers on a large scale. Whoever wants to help the society should join the government and lend help in this difficult situation,” he also said.
