India opens one of the world’s largest hospitals to fight coronavirus

India has opened one of the largest hospitals in the world to help fight coronavirus, as health authorities announced the country’s biggest one-day increase in the number of new infections.

The Sardar Patel COVID Care Centre, the largest facility of its kind in India, became partly operational on Sunday, with 2,000 of its 10,000 beds available, according to the Delhi government.

The remaining 8,000 beds at the facility, which is located in the Chattarpur area of Delhi, will be in use from Wednesday.

India’s Home Minister Amit Shah and Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal visited the care center on Saturday ahead of its launch.

In a message posted on Twitter that day, Kejriwal described the center as being “among the largest hospitals in the world.”

Meanwhile, the Home Minister tweeted that the 10,000-bed facility “would provide huge relief to the people of Delhi.”

The administration and operations of the facility will be run by the Indo-Tiberan Border Police (ITBP), Shah confirmed.

“I applaud our courageous ITBP personnel, who would be operating this COVID Care facility during these trying times. Their commitment to serve the nation and people of Delhi is unparalleled,” he added in a tweet.

The opening of the hospital coincided with the release of India health ministry data on Sunday which showed the largest rise in the daily number of new Covid-19 cases.

The country reported 19,906 new infections and 410 new deaths from the virus, bringing the total to 528,859 positive cases and 16,095 fatalities.

Delhi became the country’s worst-hit city on Wednesday, surpassing Mumbai’s coronavirus tally. Only the west India state of Maharashtra with 159,133 cases has had more infections than the capital.