Arvind Kejriwal, the Delhi chief minister, declared on Sunday that the current lockdown in the capital will be extended for another week and that compliance will be tightened, as well as the full suspension of metro rail services this week, citing the need to monitor the alarming surge of Covid-19 cases in the capital and scale up the health system proportionately.
The current lockdown, which was scheduled to end at 5 a.m. on Monday, May 10, has been extended until 5 a.m. on May 17 by an order released at 12 p.m. on Sunday by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA). Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal chairs the DDMA, while CM Kejriwal serves as vice-chair.
“We’ve also agreed that the lockdown will be enforced more strictly now, and metro services will remain totally shut down. “I am certain that everybody will obey the rules,” Kejriwal said.
There are limits on the general movement of citizens and economic activities in Delhi under the continuing lockdown, which began on April 20 and continues to this day, with exceptions for vital utilities and supplies under some circumstances. Before now, the metro service was only available to those who provided basic services.
“Because of an unexpected surge in Covid-19 incidents, we were compelled to enforce a lockout on April 20. We were all out of beds, ICUs, and other resources. On April 26, the percentage of people who are happy rose to 35%. Because of the lockout, the situation gradually improved after April 26. The percentage of people who are optimistic has dropped to 23%… We simply cannot afford to return to a bad condition at this stage.
In the 24 hours leading up to the publication of the health bulletin on Saturday, Delhi reported 17,364 new Covid-19 cases and 332 deaths. A total of 1,310,231 cases have been filed in the national capital, with 87,907 pending cases and 19,071 deaths.
The disease has a test positivity rate of 23.34 percent and a patient fatality rate of 1.46 percent. The number of infections reported daily has decreased in recent days, as has the test positivity figure, prompting several health analysts to see early signs of the second wave’s plateauing, which paralyzed the health system due to a lack of life-saving antibiotics, oxygen, oxygenated beds, ICU beds, and ventilators, resulting in many deaths.
