NEW DELHI: With the national capital witnessing a fresh surge in cases of Covid-19, nearly 24,000 calls have been made by people to access Delhi government-run ambulance services during emergency situations in the last two weeks in the city, according to official data. Besides, the centralised Control Room set up by the Delhi government has received over 5,000 calls to seek coronavirus-related information.
On October 26, the city recorded 54 deaths pushing the toll to 6,312. The next day, 4,853 fresh cases and 44 fatalities were reported. From October 28 onwards, the surge has been huge and over 5,000 daily cases were recorded per day from October 28-November 1.
Over 7,000 daily fresh cases have been recorded on two days in November (November 6 and November 8), over 6,000 daily cases four times, and more than 70 fatalities have been reported every day for the last three days, the highest in over four months. In this two-week period, the number of calls made by people for accessing ambulance services of Centralised Accident and Trauma Services (CATS) through government helplines like 102, and the number of calls made to the COVID-19 Control Room have also jumped.
On November 8, the daily infection tally was 7745, the highest single-day spike here till date. The number of ambulance calls made on that day stood at 1857 and 337 calls were made to the control room.
According to a senior health official manning the Control Room based in Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Delhi headquarters in Karkardooma in east Delhi, about “400 calls on an average are received per day by the Control Room”.
As per the official data, 5,109 calls have been received at the Control Room in the last two weeks.From October 26 to November 9, around 23,680 calls have been made by people to seek ambulance services, as per the data.In this period, a staggering number of new cases — over 86,000 — have been reported.