The chief minister of India's capital Delhi has said that state hospitals will now be reserved only for residents of the city.
Arvind Kejriwal's announcement came amid allegations that hospitals are refusing to admit new patients.
Delhi has witnessed a surge of infections in recent days. It currently has 27,000 cases with 761 deaths.
India has a total of 256,611 confirmed Covid-19 cases, the fifth-highest number in the world.
A five-member expert committee comprising top doctors told local reporters that Delhi could record 100,000 Covid-19 cases by the end of June if we follow the trend we are looking at, which "suggests that the cases are getting doubled every 14-15 days".
The news comes even as India has taken steps to further relax its stringent lockdown – malls, restaurants, temples and offices are open from Monday.
What are Delhi residents saying?
There have been a number of reports that people with Covid-like symptoms are being turned away from hospitals in the capital.
One report on local news site Scroll detailed the experience of one man who drove his mother to four hospitals, but was turned away from all of them.
Many others have tweeted about their own experiences trying to get help for family members.
Skip Twitter post by @logickahanhai
011 2230 2441/7135/7145 ;none of them are working. There is no way to book at test at home and ystrdsy i took hr to several hspitals where there were no testing kits and pvt hospitals like max, apollo would not give her admission without positive test & did not hv test kits (2/n)
— Mukul Saxena (@logickahanhai) June 5, 2020
End of Twitter post by @logickahanhai
The Delhi government's smartphone app to track available hospital beds has also added to the confusion.
The app showed vacancies at several city hospitals which then told news channel NDTV that they actually did not have any space for new patRead More – Source
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