The Delhi High Court questioned the Aam Aadmi Party government on Wednesday for relaxing norms related to Covid-19 even though cases were increasing constantly, with no household “left untouched”.

A bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Subramanium Prasad asked if the government had any strategy or policy in place to tackle the ‘alarming’ situation in the state.

The Delhi government has recently allowed 200 people to attend public functions and permitted public transportation to be fully occupied. The court questioned the rationale behind this move.

It asked when Delhi, as a city state, was "hands down beating" larger states like Maharashtra and Kerala in terms of new daily infections over the past two weeks, what steps had the AAP government taken to contain the spread.

The bench also noted that the daily number of new coronavirus cases was at 8,593 and “still counting” as received on November 10, and the number of containment zones numbered to 4,016.

The court said that the Delhi government should have done something to deal with the cases when there was an alarming rise in the number of infections over the past two to three weeks.

The latest sero survey report of the government detected the presence of antibodies in 25 per cent of the people tested, meaning that one out of four persons was infected with Covid-19, the court noted.

"No household has been left untouched," the bench said, while referring to the sero survey data as it pulled up the state for relaxing norms in such a situation when other similarly placed states were bringing in restrictions.

The court also asked why the Delhi government, which was being represented by additional standing counsel Satyakam, has not come up with any rule to enforce strict wearing of masks, which are being termed as a ‘vaccine’ till the real ones come.

"Situation has surpassed advisories," the bench said, adding that the Delhi government would have by now introduced sanctions, through legislations, to ensure wearing of masks, had it been serious about the issue.

The court reserved the matter for further hearing on November 19 while directing the AAP government to file a status report to describe the steps taken by it in the last two weeks, when the cases were on an alarming rise.

The high court was hearing a PIL by advocate Rakesh Malhotra, which sought to increase the number of testing in the national capital and getting speedy results.

The bench also questioned the government for preference of Rapid Antigen Testing to the much more accurate RT/PCR tests, when the "situation was as critical as it is now", with several asymptomatic people testing positive for coronavirus.