NEW DELHI: Expressing displeasure over the rising number of cases of coronavirus in the national capital, the Delhi High Court on Thursday observed that the city could soon become ‘corona capital of the country’.
A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramonium Prasad came down on the Delhi government stating that the govt has gone completely “haywire” on the pandemic.
The bench said the AAP government took the health of citizens for a ride and it will deal with it separately.
The high court said the Delhi government made many claims that they are topping charts in testing but the number of cases has overshot. “The city could soon become Corona capital of the country.
Thanks to the number of cases shooting up,” the bench said and added, “We are going to take it very seriously.” Delhi reported over 6,700 new cases on Thursday, pushing the infection tally to over 4.16 lakh and the positivity rate to 12.84 per cent, while 66 new fatalities, the highest in around four months, took the death toll to 6,769.
This was the third consecutive day when the number of daily cases has crossed the 6,000-mark in the city.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday had said that his government will be going to contest in the Supreme Court that high court order on our rule to reserve up to 80 per cent ICU beds reserved (for Covid-19 patients) in private hospitals.
The remarks were made by the bench while hearing a bunch of petitions relating to non-payment of salaries to doctors, paramedical staff, safai karamcharis, teachers and retired engineers and others, employed under the North Delhi Municipal Corporation.
‘We doing better than other CITIEs’
Health Minister Satyendar Jain said on Thursday the national capital was doing much better than all other metro cities in India and was on the 17th position in terms of Covid-19 deaths per million population. Delhi is 17th in deaths per million population with 338, whereas Mumbai tops the list with around 831 deaths, followed by Chennai (518), Kolkata (503) & Bangalore Urban (408), he said.