DMRC should not start immediately, says chairman of AIIMS COVID Taskforce

By By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], June 6 : Dr Naveet Wig, chairman of AIIMS COVID Taskforce, on Sunday said that Delhi Metro Rail Corporation should not resume its operation immediately. He recommended that the metro should run at 33 per cent occupancy in its initial weeks of operation.
He also stressed on maintaining a safe number of ICU beds and harmonising different units of the health system to tackle the third wave of coronavirus.
On being asked how Delhi should lift its lockdown restrictions, Wig, who is also HoD of the Medicine Department in AIIMS Delhi said, "The lockdown restrictions should be lifted but it should be a slow transition. We have to open very slowly. Metro should take some time to start. It should not start immediately. In the first few weeks, we should experiment at 25 per cent or 33 per cent occupancy. The virus cannot be eradicated."
"If we have learned our lessons from the first two waves, then we can avoid the third wave. In the first wave, we had the top-down approach. We did lockdown and tried to educate the community, sensitise the health system and thus we were able to handle it," he said.
"In the second wave, it was the bottoms-up approach. All districts, sub-districts and villages were made to do their job. Now it is time to be practical. Now we have to check if we have 50 per cent of ICU beds vacant in each district," he further said.
"We have to harmonise PHCs, wellness clinics, sub-centres to take care of testing, tracking and quarantining. We have to gear up ambulance services at district levels," he added
He also urged to use double masking with clean masks."Clean mask is the mantra," he said.
India reported 1,14,460 new COVID-19 cases, 1,89,232 discharges, and 2677 deaths in the last 24 hours, as per Union Health Ministry.