NEW DELHI, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- India's federal government Tuesday said it would increase the intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the national capital to 6,000 in the next few days.
The announcement was made by National Institution for Transforming India (NITI ) Aayog (commission), member (health) V K Paul during the government's press briefing on COVID-19.
"It has become important to increase the ICU bed capacity in hospitals and in this regard, the limit of ICU beds will be increased from existing capacity of 3,523 ICU beds to over 6,000 ICU beds in next few days," Paul said. "We are trying fully to increase the capacity and it can be achieved with the coordinated efforts of the federal government, Delhi government and private hospitals."
Paul said efforts were also underway to double testing for COVID-19 on daily basis.
"It has been decided to double the testing and there should be no relaxation in the testing," Paul said. "Testing helps us in tackling individual cases as well in containing the pandemic."
At present 60,000 COVID-19 tests are carried out in a day in Delhi and with the help of additional teams and mobile testing laboratories, it would be taken to 120,000 tests a day.
COVID-19 cases have shown an upward spiral in Delhi since the beginning of November.
Delhi at present is the seventh most affected state in the country with 489,202 COVID-19 cases and 7,713 related deaths.
On Tuesday morning the federal health ministry said the number of COVID-19 cases in India reached 8,874,290 and the death toll rose to 130,519. Enditem
