With Delhi Reporting Record High COVID-19 Cases, Centre Likely To Take Charge Again

With Delhi recording fresh high of the new cases of COVID-19 on Friday (30 October), the centre is likely to step in to contain the spread of the infection for a second time since its last intervention in July, reports Hindustan Times.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has called a special review meeting on Monday (2 November) with the Delhi government officials to discuss the issue relating to the upsurge in new cases amid the ongoing festive season.

This comes after Delhi recorded back to back four days of record-high tally of new cases with an alarmingly high positivity rate as a tenth of all the tests in the past 24 hours had turned out positive. On Friday (30 October) alone, the national capital reported 5,891 new cases which was way higher than the average of 4,749 new cases reported every day over the past week.

The meeting will be chaired by Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and attended by the officials from Delhi Government, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul and other senior officials.

It should be noted that even though Delhi has revamped its contact tracing policy to test five to seven contacts per COVID case, it continues to fall lower than what experts term as the ideal.

Recently, NITI Aayog's Dr Paul had said during a Health Ministry briefing that contact tracing can only be considered successful if at least 10 contacts of every new positive case are traced and tested.