Lockdown in Delhi? CM Arvind Kejriwal to hold COVID-19 review meeting today

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will hold a review meeting on the COVID-19 situation on Saturday (April 17). Nodal Minister for COVID-19 management Manish Sisodia, Health Minister Satyendar Jain and other officials will take part in the meeting.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister also urged the citizens to follow the weekend curfew in Delhi. The weekend lockdown came into force from 10 pm on Friday. This is for the first time this year the national capital will witness strict prohibition on weekends and is likely to be extended if cases continue to rise.

"In view of the Covid-19, a curfew has been imposed in Delhi on Saturday and Sunday. Please follow it. We all have to defeat the pandemic together," Kejriwal tweeted.

With the alarming situation due to the exponential rise in Covid-19 cases in the national capital, the state government has on Thursday announced to impose weekend curfew (from Friday 10 pm to Monday 5 am), while the other restriction will continue till April 30.

Delhi has been reporting over 10,000 new cases daily for the past one week nearly. A total of 19,484 fresh Coronavirus cases were reported in Delhi on Friday night, the highest single-day spike in the capital so far.

India reported 2,34,692 fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours, the highest single-day spike ever, pushing the country`s overall Covid tally to 1,45,26,609, according to the Health Ministry data released on Saturday.

This is the third consecutive day that the country has registered over 2 lakh Covid cases. India recorded 2,00,739 and 2,17,353 cases on Thursday and Friday respectively.

Meanwhile, as many as 1,341 people died of Covid in the last 24 hours, taking the country`s death toll to 1,75,649 so far. The daily active cases tally on Friday rose to 16,79,740.

(With agency inputs)