Amid rising coronavirus cases in the national capital, the Delhi government has announced a six-day lockdown from 19 April, Monday night till 26 April Monday morning.

The lockdown will be enforced from 10 pm on April 19 till 5 am on April 26. The announcement comes after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal held a meeting with Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal along with senior government officers over the steep rise in Covid-19 cases in the capital.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said, “The government will take full care of you. We took this tough decision taking the situation into consideration.”

“The six-day lockdown will help us arrange more beds in Delhi,” he added.

He said that ICU beds were almost over and oxygen supply is critically low in the national capital. He shared that one private hospital had run out of oxygen at 3 am on Saturday which could have been a major crisis.

In his address, Kejriwal said, “The Covid situation in Delhi is grim. Every health system has its threshold. Despite daily 25000 cases on average, the system is still running. But, if the health system collapses then the situation will be disastrous. The health system will not be able to handle more load. So the government believes a lockdown is imperative.”

He said that during this lockdown the government aims to ramp up the health infrastructure.

All private offices will arrange work from home and only government offices and essential services will be open.

Groceries shop selling food and medicine shops will be open. Banks, ATMs will also be open. Home deliveries and takeaways will be allowed. Marriages that are scheduled will be allowed and only 50 people will be allowed and passes will be issued for the same said Delhi CM.

In the last 24 hours, Delhi recorded the biggest jump in its daily Covid-19 cases with 25,462 cases and a positivity rate of nearly 30 per cent. A day before that Delhi recorded 24,375 Covid cases and 167 deaths were reported.

Delhi had imposed a weekend curfew to ‘break the chain of transmission.’ In this order, restaurants, malls, gyms and spas were shut down while movie theatres were allowed with a third of their capacity.

India recorded 2,73,810 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total caseload to over 1.5 crores, according to data from the Union Health Ministry.