Few admissions during 5th wave question need for ongoing curbs

NEW DELHI: At no point since cases of Covid-19 began surging in the Capital this year has the hospital bed occupancy rate been beyond 20% of capacity, data released by the Delhi government every day shows. At its peak, the city recorded 43 deaths in a day on Thursday-of these, only three could be directly linked to Covid-19 alone, the city's health minister Satyendar Jain said on Friday.

- Binayak Dasgupta

Another other way to look at Delhi's current outbreak is to consider diagnosis and the predicted spike in admissions, which typically take place a week later. In Delhi, the peak of recorded cases came on January 12, and that of the test positivity on January 14. Since then, the number of people in the hospital have remained in the 2,600-2,700 range, even in fact dipping slightly in the last three days. And cases too have fallen sharply to 10,765 on Friday, from this wave's peak of 28,867.

Whichever way the data is sliced, the import is clear: Delhi's health care infrastructure has been far from a crisis. And this prompts questions on the Delhi Disaster Management Authority's (DDMA) response, including a decision by Anil Baijal, who as the Union territory's lieutenant governor heads the body, to not lift the weekend curfew or allow shops in markets to return to business as usual (instead of opening on alternate days).

There's also no talk of reopening schools, which Maharashtra (and Mumbai) have already indicated that they will do as early as next week.