The Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government on Tuesday announced building seven makeshift hospitals with 7,000 ICU beds to prepare for a potential third wave of the Chinese virus pandemic. Only, the government has said that it will take six months to ready these makeshift hospitals.
7 Make-shift Hospitals coming up in Delhi‼️
— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) August 10, 2021
➡️Equipped with 7000 ICU beds to battle the next possible COVID-19 wave
➡️Delhi’s Health Dept. gets financial approval, Construction to be completed within 6 months
➡️@ArvindKejriwal Govt is preparing for 3rd Wave on a War Footing! pic.twitter.com/UyYaJQ8KTm
The announcement, however, has not gone down well with the netizens who mocked the Delhi government for its sluggish approach.
Twitter user Darshan Pathak took a jibe at the government by saying that the third wave will wait for Kejriwal’s party to complete the construction of the makeshift hospitals.
Glad to know that possible 3rd wave will wait for at least another 6 months till Kejri Sir completes construction of makeshift hospitals. https://t.co/9VhSKpF9AQ
— Darshan Pathak (@darshanpathak) August 11, 2021
A user by the name Rakesh Tiwari questioned AAP what is it going to do with the hospitals after six months when two waves have already ravaged Delhi and the third is predicted to arrive soon.
3rd wave is expected within 2 months and govt will probably make hospitals within 6 months?
— राकेश तिवारी (@rjmarch2015) August 10, 2021
To do postmortem or keep bodies in mortuary?#Politics https://t.co/kGeeMKUeOc
Another netizen reminded Arvind Kejriwal’s party that the pandemic has been around since February 2020 and these makeshift hospitals should have been built last year itself.
Makeshift & that too are to come up after six months! Shame on you . You are brazen to be talking about it , what face you have . U must realise your capacity to befool people has its limits.
— vivek bajaj (@vbajaj54) August 10, 2021
One Vivek Bansal slammed the AAP government for fooling people and said that makeshift hospitals should not take that long to construct, defying the purpose.
Makeshift & that too are to come up after six months! Shame on you . You are brazen to be talking about it , what face you have . U must realise your capacity to befool people has its limits.
— vivek bajaj (@vbajaj54) August 10, 2021
Delhi’s Health Minister seeks approval
Delhi’s Health Minister Satyendra Jain on Tuesday sought approvals from deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who is also Delhi’s finance minister for the project.
“The hospitals will be completed within the next six months positively and all the concerned departments will be working on a war footing. Though these hospitals will be temporary, they are being constructed from a long-term perspective as Covid-19 is here to stay at least in the near future,” said Jain sharing the plan.
Reportedly, the government after facing two waves of the pandemic is still planning to set up 37,000 Covid beds, excluding those in Covid care centres.
DRDO sets up makeshift hospitals in record time
On the other hand, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) had built a 1,000 bed coronavirus facility in the national capital in a record time of 11 days. The facility was equipped with 250 ICU beds as well.
Amidst the second wave this year, the DRDO had built a 900-bed full Covid care facility in Ahmedabad in 15 days.
Jain claims third wave to be mild
The Delhi Health Minister on Tuesday had said that he believes the third wave if it comes, will be milder than the second wave in Delhi. As per his reasoning, the majority of the Covid-19 cases that emerged in the second wave this year were caused by the Delta variant hence most of that population may already have antibodies.
“Analysis of the reports from Delhi that were sent to ICMR also pointed out that Delhi was battling the Delta variant during the second wave. Therefore, I don’t think that the Delta variant should be a cause of concern for us anymore as the entire second wave was because of the Delta variant,” the minister claimed.
“Since the Delta variant originated in India, we have already faced the wrath of this variant during the second wave. The other countries need to prepare themselves now as the variant is spreading there. Delhi has already battled and overcome the Delta variant wave,” he added.
AAP govt’s lax attitude in setting up Oxygen plants
During the worst phase of the second wave, when Delhi’s CM was making continuous TV appeals to play victimhood over lack of Oxygen and blamed everyone from the centre to neighbouring states, it was revealed from government data that the AAP government had neglected setting up oxygen plants even though money was allotted from the PM CARES fund.
The Union Health Ministry had informed the Delhi High Court that the central government had sanctioned funds from PM CARES Fund to Kejriwal Government in December 2020 to set up eight PSA (Pressure Swing Absorption) oxygen plants in Delhi. However, since December, only one such plant has been set up by the Kejriwal govt.
