The Centre moved in quickly on Wednesday to protect its long-standing partnership with Singapore, with the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar rebuffing Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for his “irresponsible comments” on the ‘new Singapore Covid19 strain’ on Tuesday.
Post the Singapore Government calling in the Indian High Commissioner to convey strong objection to Kejriwal’s tweet on unfounded assertions around the Singapore variant, Jaishankar tweeted that the Delhi Chief Minister does not speak for India, and on a placatory note highlighted that Singapore and India have been solid partners in the fight against Covid-19.
“Appreciate Singapore’s role as a logistics hub and oxygen supplier. Their gesture of deploying military aircraft to help us speaks of our exceptional relationship,” the tweet added.
Singapore, on Tuesday, dismissed media reports quoting Delhi Chief Minister that a very dangerous trend of the novel coronavirus was prevalent in the city state, saying there is no truth whatsoever in such assertions.
Third wave
Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected and expressed regrets over Kejriwal’s ‘unfounded’ assertions made on Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday that a variant of Covid-19 found in Singapore was particularly harmful to children and could cause a third wave of infections in India.
“..there is no ‘Singapore variant’. The strain prevalent in many of the Covid-19 cases in recent weeks is the B.1.617.2 variant, which was first detected in India,” said the Singapore Foreign Affairs Ministry statement issued on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the ongoing face-off between the Centre and Delhi Government notwithstanding, Kejriwal, on Wednesday, announced after a review meeting that a special task force comprising paediatricians, experts and senior IAS officers would be constituted as part of Delhi government’s efforts to protect children from Covid’s third wave.
In the meeting, the need for advance preparation for the third wave of Covid were discussed.The third wave of Covid may require Delhi to be prepared with 40,000 oxygen beds, and the Delhi government is making preparations to install 10,000 ICU beds, said Kejriwal.
The national capital has reported 3,846 new cases and 235 deaths in the last 24 hours to Wednesday, the Delhi State Heath Bulletin showed.
The daily test positivity rate came down to 5.78 per cent. On Tuesday, Delhi had reported 4482 new infections and 265 deaths.