Delhi, the capital of India, will be closed for a week until Monday, April 26, the chief minister announced on Monday.
“If we do not put a blockade now we can reach a tragedy,” said Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister.
As part of the blockade, there will be a traffic restriction, starting with local time 22:00, local time, until 05:00, on April 26. However, essential products and service providers will be exempt from this rule.
All offices and private units, such as shops, malls, gyms, cinemas and swimming pools, will remain closed, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority said on Monday.
Delhi is facing a shortage of medical resources: Kejriwal said the city is facing a significant shortage of beds, oxygen supply and remdesivir injections.
He acknowledged that the situation was grim, adding that a hospital “somehow arranged the oxygen on time” when it almost ran out at 3 in the morning, local time, on Sunday morning.
The city administration has taken a number of steps to expand medical infrastructure, including the transformation of sports complexes, hotels and schools into Covid-19 care centers.
On Sunday, Kejriwal said up to 2,000 oxygen beds would be added to the Yamuna sports complex in Delhi in the next two days.
Delhi reported 25,462 new cases of Covid-19 on Sunday, bringing the total number of cases in the city to 853,460. At least 12,121 people have also died from the virus, according to the Delhi Health Department.