Govt to set targets for Delhi’s Covid-19 infra

Kejriwal chaired review meetings with the expert committee at 11am and with the preparations committee around 4pm. These panels were set up by the Delhi government on May 27.

Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday discussed setting targets and objectives in areas such as hospital beds, intensive care unit beds, medical oxygen management, and containment efforts, apart from ways to deal with a potential outbreak affecting children in two separate review meetings to prepare for a possible third wave of Covid-19 infections.

A medical worker tends to a patient suffering from the coronavirus disease inside the ICU ward at Holy Family Hospital in New Delhi. (Reuters)

Kejriwal chaired review meetings with the expert committee at 11am and with the preparations committee around 4pm. These panels were set up by the Delhi government on May 27.

“By observing other countries, we have learnt that advance preparations are a must to tackle a potential third wave of the pandemic. In the light of these observations, I chaired a review meeting with the Delhi government’s experts committee and discussed several important issues,” Kejriwal’s office said in a tweet after the morning meeting.

In another tweet, after the 4pm meeting, the chief minister’s office said, “After experts committee meeting, the CM met the preparations committee and had discussions on important issues such as oxygen management and ICU beds.”

The CM’s office, however, did not share further details about the meetings.

Both meetings were also attended by deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, health minister Satyendar Jain, and some senior government officials.

One of the officials present in the meetings, who asked not to be named, said: “The discussions were largely on setting objective criteria for hospital beds, oxygen management, and what kind of containment efforts are needed for what level of new cases surfacing in Delhi. The committee will now look into developing these criteria with the help of models developed by IIT-Delhi.”

The Delhi high court on May 28 asked the state government to implement the recommendations of a study by IIT-Delhi to streamline the oxygen supply chain in the Capital. The study was commissioned by the Delhi government on a suggestion by the court on May 5.

Another official present in Friday’s meetings said: “There were also discussions on paediatric cases and the preparations that would be needed to handle potential outbreak of Covid-19 in children.”

A third senior government official said, “The government is focusing on the large-scale local production of face masks suitable for children, identifying hospitals suitable for increasing oxygen beds and ICUs for children, a special training programme for nurses engaged in paediatric wards, and designing focused mass awareness programmes.”

As far as oxygen is concerned, said the third official, the government has ordered five buffer tanks with a combined capacity of 271MT, and installations should be completed by June 10.

The government has also procured 4,600 oxygen concentrators over the last two months, and 3,330 more of such devices are scheduled to be procured in the next two weeks, said the third official.

“The government has also arranged over 3,700 additional oxygen cylinders of the D-type category in the last two months (such cylinders are used as backup supply in larger hospitals and serve as the main source of oxygen in smaller hospitals and nursing homes),” he added.