Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday said that a vaccine against COVID-19, once approved, should be given to everyone in the country for free.
“The whole country sho-uld get the vaccine for free. It is the whole country’s right, everyone is worried because of the [novel] coronavirus,” Mr. Kejriwal told reporters.
He also said that schools in the Capital “are not opening now”. On September 30, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in its guidelines gave powers to the States to decide if they wanted to open schools from October 15, but the Delhi government has not allowed schools to function in the city because of high number of virus cases.
Delhi on Saturday witnessed over 4,000 fresh COVID-19 cases for a second consecutive day with 4,116 persons testing positive in the past 24 hours, according to a health bulletin released by the city government. Also, 36 more deaths were reported, pushing the toll to 6,225. Of the total 3,52,520 cases, 3,19,828 have recovered and there are 26,467 active cases, the highest in the Capital in 23 days.
The number of people in hospitals and under home isolation also increased on Saturday. Out of the total 15,737 beds available for COVID-19 treatment in Delhi, 66.1% were vacant, stated the government data.
The positivity rate (percentage of people testing positive every 100 tests done) was 7.4% — the highest in over a month.
Hunger strike
Five resident doctors of North Delhi Municipal Corporation-run Hindu Rao Hospital continued their indefinite hunger strike for the second day on Saturday against non-payment of salaries of over 220 resident doctors of the hospital for three months.
The five doctors started their hunger strike on the hospital premises at 4 p.m. on Friday and had spent the night at the hospital, which used to be a COVID-19 treatment facility.
The resident doctors of the hospital have been on strike since October 5 over the salary issue.
Attacking the BJP on the issue, the ruling AAP said that the North civic body should be handed over to it for one year and promised to run it better within the same budget and revenue.
“It is unfortunate that at a time when organisations and institutions are giving bonuses to their workers for the festive season, the municipal corporation is not even paying the salaries to its employees,” AAP leader Durgesh Pathak said.
