Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday said that Coronavirus situation in the national capital is much better than what mathematical projections had predicted a month ago for July.
Putting out the analytics, Kejriwal said that as per estimates, 2.25 lakh cases were predicted by July 15 in Delhi but after united efforts, the cases today are half of the prediction.
“We now have 1.15 lakh cases. We are in a much better situation than what the mathematical projections had shown. The situation is under control but we cannot be complacent.”
The Chief Minister had, last month, claimed that the coronavirus cases would mount to 2. 25 lakh and the city would require 33,000 beds by July 15.
The AAP government had earlier said that it was expecting 5.5 lakh cases by July 31.
He further stated that on June 1 there were only 4,100 beds in Delhi while today there are 15,500 beds for Coronavirus patients.
“Today, there are 2,100 ICU beds, of which 1,100 are vacant. Because of this, today people have the confidence that in case they need to be hospitalised, there will be no shortages,” the chief minister said in a virtual press conference.
He further emphasised that the Delhi government could not have fought the disease alone.
“If the Delhi Government had decided to fight COVID-19 alone, we would have failed. That is why we went to everyone including the Central government, NGOs and religious organisations,” he said.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also thanked all parties including the BJP and Congress for their contributions in the fight against the pandemic.
With 1,606 new Coronavirus cases and 35 deaths in the last 24 hours, the national capital recorded a total tally of 1,15,346 cases and 3,446 deaths. The number of recoveries are, however, five times higher than active cases.
According to Delhi government’s daily health bulletin, as many as 93,236 people have recovered, almost five times the number of active cases which stands at 18,664. A total of 1,924 patients recovered in the last 24 hours.
On June 23, the city had witnessed the highest single-day peak of 3,947 cases, but the figures have come down steadily since then despite the number of tests increasing.
Testing numbers in the city have also gone up since the commencement of rapid antigen tests last month. Over 5,650 RT-PCR and 15,413 rapid antigen tests were conducted on Tuesday.
Earlier this month, Kejriwal inaugurated the first ‘Plasma Bank’ in the country for the novel Coronavirus patients in the city and urged the COVID-19 survivors to come forward and donate plasma to save lives.
Plasma therapy was among the five weapons Kejriwal had recently mentioned to fight the deadly infection, while asserting that the treatment turned out to be a life-saver for people in the capital.
Late June, raking up his slogan of “Corona harega aur Delhi jeetega”, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had asserted that his government has adopted ‘five weapons’ to fight the virus – ramping up bed capacity; testing and isolation, survey and screening, providing oximeter and oxygen concentrator and finally treatment with plasma therapy.