NEW DELHI: Delhi authorities warned on Tuesday that they expect cases in the Indian capital to shoot up almost 20 times to more than half a million in the coming weeks.
India is easing its national lockdown to ease the devastating economic blow dealt by the virus, but the disease is still raging across the world’s second-most populous nation with around 270,000 reported infections — the fifth-highest caseload in the world.
It has reported almost 10,000 new infections in the past 24 hours with crowded megacities like Mumbai and Delhi the worst hit.
Manish Sisodia, Delhi’s deputy chief minister, said after a crisis meeting that authorities expected infections to soar to 550,000 by the end of July, up from almost 30,000 at present.
“There will be 44,000 cases by June 15, 100,000 by June 30, 225,000 by July 15, and we’ll need to prepare necessary infrastructure accordingly,” Sisodia told reporters.
He said the city of around 20 million people, where hospitals are already stretched and anecdotal evidence suggests crematoriums are struggling, needed 80,000 hospital beds.
Delhi’s health minister last week said that it had around 9,000 beds available for coronavirus patients.
Moscow emerged from a strict coronavirus lockdown on Tuesday despite Russia seeing thousands of new cases every day, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned the pandemic was “worsening” worldwide.
Residents of Russia’s capital flocked to parks after officials lifted restrictions in place since March 30, even though 8,595 new cases were registered countrywide on Tuesday and the death toll passed 6,000.
“It’s nice out and there are a lot of people on the streets,” said marketing manager Olga Ivanova, walking in central Moscow: “It’s a beautiful day, in every sense of the word.”
Russia has the third-highest number of confirmed infections in the world after the United States and Brazil, but officials say this is due to a huge testing campaign and point to a relatively low mortality rate.
However, critics say the death rate is being under-reported and accuse officials of rushing to lift restrictions for political reasons.
But as large parts of Europe and the United States reopen, the WHO reported a record number of new coronavirus cases globally.
Director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that 136,000 cases had been reported in the previous 24 hours, “the most in a single day so far”, with the majority of them in the Americas and South Asia.
“Although the situation in Europe is improving, globally it is worsening,” he told reporters.
Tedros said that in countries where the situation was getting better, “the biggest threat is now complacency”.
“More than six months into this pandemic, this is not the time for any country to take its foot off the pedal,” he said.
Underlining his warning, the death toll and infection rates continue to climb sharply in India even as the government lifted some curbs on Monday after a 10-week lockdown.
Authorities in the capital, Delhi, warned that cases in the city could shoot up almost 20 times to more than 500,000 in the coming weeks.
Worldwide, Covid-19 deaths have passed 406,000, with more than seven million infections, since the disease emerged in China late last year before sweeping the globe, subjecting billions to some form of lockdown and paralysing economies.
