The Delhi government is completely prepared to tackle any uptick in the city’s Covid-19 graph and can scale up testing, hospital beds and oxygen supply whenever required, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday, after a review meeting with senior officials of the state health department, in light of an infection spike in several countries, including China.

Kejriwal underlined that no cases of the BF.7 subvariant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus (which causes Covid-19), the key driver of infections of China, have been detected in Delhi so far.

“The BF.7 variant was not detected even in sewage samples collected and tested from seven different places in Delhi. Of the cases reported in Delhi, 92% are related to the XBB variant or its sub-variants,” Kejriwal said.

Delhi on Thursday reported 10 fresh cases of Covid-19, at a test positivity rate of 0.41%. The city also recorded one death on Thursday, only the third this month and the 12th in two months.

The Capital has recorded just 151 cases of the infection so far in December, at an average of about seven a day. In comparison, at its peak, Delhi recorded 28,867 cases in a day (on January 13 this year) and 448 deaths over 24 hours (on May 3, 2021).

“If the need arises, we can test up to one lakh people [100,000] a day. Right now, we have 8,000 beds allotted for Covid-19. During the previous peak, 25,000 beds were available, and now, we have prepared for 36,000 beds. At present, we have 6,000 reserve oxygen cylinders, 15 oxygen tankers and the capacity to store 928 metric tonnes of oxygen. In Delhi, almost all people have got the first and second vaccine doses, but only 24% people have got their precaution dose. I request all the people of Delhi to get their precaution dose as soon as they can,” Kejriwal said in a press conference after the meeting.

He also asked officials to ramp up infrastructure and monitor the pandemic situation. 

Deputy chief minister and state health minister Manish Sisodia, chief secretary Naresh Kumar and officials of the health department were also present during the Thursday meeting.

Cases in several parts of the world have picked up over the past few weeks, with China the worst off. However, large parts of the country does not have previous exposure to the virus or adequate protection through vaccination, prompting experts to advise caution and insist that the situation is different in India, which has significantly higher immunisation levels.

Kejriwal said that the city’s oxygen infrastructure has been upgraded significantly. 

“One of the main problems during the pandemic last year was the availability of oxygen. Apart from all the cylinders available in government hospitals, we also have a reserve of 6,000 cylinders. Currently we have around 12 tankers and there are another three private tankers that we can use if the need arises, so we have 15 tankers to transport oxygen,” said Kejriwal.

The Delhi government is also planning to increase staff strength in hospitals. 

“The chief minister instructed us to increase staff strength in all government hospitals to deal with any emergency in the Covid-19 situation,” the Delhi government said in a statement on Thursday.