Omicron: Here's how Delhi is preparing to combat new Covid variant | 5 points

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Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday said his government is gearing up to fight a possible threat of the Omicron variant of coronavirus. He announced several preparations taking place in the national capital, from oxygen beds to its supply and storage facilities.

The chief minister held a meeting with government departments to review the preparations to deal with a possible third wave.

Here are some announcements he made after the meeting at an online media briefing:

1. 30,000 oxygen beds have been prepared. Out of these, 10, 000 are ICU beds. There are 6,800 beds under construction that will be ready by February.
2. "In every municipal ward, we will be able to prepare 100 oxygen beds at a notice of two weeks. There are 270 municipal wards which mean we will be able to prepare 27,000 beds at a short notice", he said.
3. The state government is ordering 32 kinds of medicines to create their buffer stocks of two months and training manpower.
4. An extra storage facility of 442 metric tonnes of medical oxygen has been created, something that was not there during the previous wave.
5. The government has imported 6,000 cylinders from China and there are three private refilling plants that can fill 1500 cylinders per day. Combining all hospitals in Delhi, there is around 750 MT of oxygen capacity. An extra storage capacity of 442 MT is being prepared.

In April and May, Delhi battled a brutal second wave of the pandemic that claimed a huge number of lives and led to a shortage of oxygen and essential drugs at hospitals.

On April 20, Delhi had reported 28,395 cases, the highest in the city since the beginning of the pandemic last year. On April 22, the case positivity rate was 36.2 percent, the highest so far.

The highest number of 448 deaths was reported on May 3.

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