NEW DELHI, July 9: A Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) meeting, attended by all the bigwigs, on Friday approved a "Graded Response Action Plan" prepared by experts that operates automatically and transparently to deal with a potential third wave of the devastatingly terrible covid pandemic.

"No doubts will remain about when the lockdown will be imposed or when it will open," Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted. And no confusion, it's automatic.

The colour-coded graded action plan was finalised at the DDMA meeting attended by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Dr VK Paul of the Niti Aayog, Dr Balram Bhargav of the ICMR, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria and Dr SK Singh of the National CDC.

District Magistrates, Deputy Commissioners of Police, Municipal Deputy Commissioners and others so designated will ensure implementation of the plan.

The plan has four levels of alerts like yellow (L-1), amber (L-2), orange (L-3) and red (L-4) which will be based on such parameters as the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) of two consecutive days, average daily case load of a week, weekly average of oxygen-dependent bed occupancy.

Activities allowed under the four levels are already set and listed in the plan and the Government need not dictate any guidelines time and again leading to unwarranted criticism and resistance to ban orders. The lockdown is clamped automatically when the test or hospital data crosses a threshold. One need look up the data of the day only, to know what is allowed and what is not.

‘Red’ (L-4) denotes over 5% positivity rate in two consecutive days, or the average number of daily new cases for a week reaching 16,000 or a 7-day average of 3,000 oxygen-bed occupancy. At this level, total lockdown and complete curfew will become effective automatically with restrictions on activities as classified in the plan and notified.

The parameters for L-1 are TPR above 0.5% or 1,500 cases or 500 beds occupied; for L-2: TPR above 1% or 3,500 cases or 700 beds occupied; L-3: TPR over 2% or 9,000 cases or 1,000 beds occupied.

Essential goods supply and services will be allowed to open at all times.

Curbs on travellers

The plan also proposes guidelines for people entering the city from other States. Those coming in by air when Delhi is on red alert will have to produce a two-dose full vaccination certificate or a negative RT-PCR report not older than 72 hours. And those coming by air from States where the Test Positivity Rate (TPR) is more than 5%, and also those coming by any other mode of transport from States where the TPR is more than 10%, must produce the documents, irrespective of the situation in Delhi.

Those coming from where a new mutant of covid virus is detected also will have to carry the certificates irrespective of the situation in Delhi. A 14-day mandatory institutional or paid quarantine stay will be imposed on defaulters.

As for international travellers arriving in Delhi, the Central Government's guidelines will be followed. They will be required to produce certificate of full vaccination of the two doses of covid vaccine or a negative RT-PCR report not more than 72 hours old.

As early as June 5 Kejriwal had started prepping to face a third covid wave in case it happens and not to be taken unawares like in the second wave which took a very heavy toll in a short span of a single month's time, three times the casualties in the country last time in a whole year.

Addressing a press conference on June 5 where he announced relaxation of covid curbs, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said Delhi is preparing well to ensure to not get caught off-guard next time.

"We are preparing for third wave of COVID-19 keeping in mind that 37,000 cases may be reported at its peak," Kejriwal had said. ICU beds and medicine supplies were being ramped up, he said. A 420-tonne oxygen storage capacity will be created to avert shortages as it happened in the second wave. Indraprastha Gas Limited will produce 150 tonne of oxygen and 6,000 oxygen cylinders have also been bought by the Delhi Government.

The Chief Minister said on another occasion that the number of peak cases in a day in the first wave was about 4,500 which escalated to over 28,000 in the second.