This Article is From May 11, 2021

Glitches Delay Start Of Delhi's GTB Hospital Covid Facility

The facility, which was to become operational today, will now start functioning tomorrow.

Glitches Delay Start Of Delhi's GTB Hospital Covid Facility

The extended facility with 500 ICU beds has come up at Ramlila Maidan within two weeks.

New Delhi:

Citing technical glitches, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain has announced that the 500-bed extended facility of Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, which was to become operational Tuesday evening, will now start functioning today.

"Due to some unavoidable technical glitches, extended facility of GTB hospital will be operational from tomorrow. Team GTB is working day and night to ensure health care services are available to Delhiites," Mr Jain said in a Twitter post on Tuesday evening.

The extended facility with 500 ICU beds has come up at Ramlila Maidan within two weeks.

The number of Covid cases reported daily and the positivity rate in Delhi has been declining steadily, but the state government has warned residents against becoming complacent and dropping the guard.

On Tuesday, the capital recorded 12,481 fresh cases out of the 70,276 samples tested. The death count over the past 24 hours was 347 and the positivity rate further dropped from 19.10 per cent on Monday to 17.76 per cent.

Weeks after a surge in Covid cases in Delhi left people scrambling for oxygen and ICU beds and forced the government to impose a lockdown, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday said there is no shortage now.

"Coronavirus cases are going down in Delhi... so is the second wave. With your co-operation the lockdown was successful and we've increased the number of oxygen beds in the past few days. Yesterday we set up 500 new ICU beds near GTB Hospital," the Chief Minister said, adding, "Now there is no shortage of ICU and oxygen beds in Delhi."

Cautioning residents, he said that "the positivity rate has gone down but still we can't afford leniency".

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