Covid: Delhi imposes weekend curfew, CM Kejriwal tests positive

AUTHORITIES in Delhi on Tuesday (4) asked people to stay indoors over coming weekends after Covid-19 cases quadrupled in a week with the state’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal saying he was also affected by the virus just a day after addressing an election rally without wearing the mask.

Kejriwal, who leads the Aam Aadmi Party (common man’s party), was one of the 37,379 new Covid-19 cases reported in the country in the past 24 hours. Deaths in the past day totalled 124.

The daily caseload was the highest since early September and experts suspect that the highly infectious Omicron variant has started overtaking the Delta variant. Authorities, however, said that hospitalisations have not gone up yet.

Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia (ANI Photo)

Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said in a media briefing that though most patients were showing mild or no symptoms and recovering fast, people will have to stay at home over the weekends to control the outbreak.

He also said that most offices in the city will also have to see that 50 per cent of their employees work from home and added that those who are infected should stay at home so that the hospitals are able to handle cases that are more serious.

Kejriwal, who recently addressed an election rally in the poll-bound northern state of Uttarakhand, said on Twitter that he had isolated himself at home with mild symptoms and appealed to those he had been contact in recent days to do the same and get tested for Covid-19.

Neither Kejriwal nor any people who were seen sharing the dais with him during the rally donned masks.

The Delhi chief minister was slammed over his Covid behaviour on social media platform. One Facebook user posted on Kejriwal’s official page saying, “Try spending some time in isolation to watch your own videos/advertisements on how to be careful, wear masks, and not overcrowd public places.”

Last year, mega election rallies in different parts of the country wreaked havoc and with several elections due in some months, the health experts have become apprehensive about a similar possibility. A court in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous in India, has even urged authorities to postpone state polls due in some months.

India's overall positive case rate has almost tripled since early November and some cities have already closed schools and colleges.

The country has recorded nearly 35 million cases of Covid since the pandemic first hit it in January 2020 and the death tally stands at more than 482,000.