Maken Urges NHRC to Ensure 70% Hospital Beds in Delhi Are Kept for COVID-19 Patients

The petition comes in wake of complaints of patients being denied admission. It also calls for the provision for 10,000 ventilators and 42,000 beds, while urging that tests be made available even for those who are asymptomatic.

New Delhi: On a day when the Delhi government said it was expecting COVID-19 cases in the city to rise to 5.5 lakh by July end, former Delhi minister and senior Congress leader Ajay Maken on Tuesday moved the National Human Rights Commission to seek directions to the city administration to reserve 70% of all hospital beds for coronavirus patients.

In his petition, Maken also demanded that the medical infrastructure required to cope with the COVID-19 needs be improved significantly and provisions of opening the city under Unlock 1 be taken forward only after the infection rate falls significantly.

In his plea before the NHRC, Maken said an immediate provision should be made for 10,000 ventilators and 42,000 beds in keeping with the recommendations of the Mahesh Verma committee report to the Delhi government.

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He also cautioned that removing the lockdown without taking adequate precautions could prove disastrous. “Open Delhi only if the positivity ratio comes down from 27 to less than 10 per hundred. Fill up all COVID-dedicated Delhi Government hospital beds as currently 70% Delhi government beds are lying vacant,” he said.

The Congress leader also pointed out that Delhi has not been carrying out requisite number of COVID-19 tests and so the actual situation is not being known. He charged that the number of tests per day had reduced by 50% to 3,700, the lowest since May 15. He also demanded that the policy of only testing symptomatic patients should be done away with and called for allowing testing of asymptomatic patients.

Maken said these steps were essential for “protection and preservation of public life in Delhi”. Coming in the backdrop of a large number of people complaining that they could not find beds for their ailing relatives in Delhi and also had difficulty in getting them tested for COVID-19, Maken urged the NHRC for its “indulgence in the unprecedented health governance crisis endangering human life in the national capital”.

The former Union minister also tweeted that Delhi was at present well short of the required number of beds.