NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday cleared the admissions process for 45,000 junior doctors to practice at government health facilities after a month-long protest by health workers who demanded that staff numbers be increased in the face of a rapid surge in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases. India’s new COVID-19 cases jumped to 117,100 on Friday, a five-fold increase in a week, as the fast-spreading omicron variant of the disease has overtaken the previously dominant delta strain. The country’s total infections stand at 35.23 million, with 483,178 deaths, according to health ministry data. While India has one of the worst doctor-to-patient ratios in the world — just 1 to 1,456 — some 45,000 young doctors who passed postgraduate exams last year have been idle as their admission process was stalled by legal disputes, including a controversy over reserved spaces for poorer Indians. The Supreme Court ruled the government should start the admissions process “in national interest.” The process begins with counseling, during which doctors are assigned to hospitals in accordance with their skills and preferences. “We have been hearing this matter for two days. We must start counseling in national interest,” Justices D. Y. Chandrachud and A. S. Bopanna said in the court’s decision. The ruling was welcomed with relief by resident doctors who were on strike from early December amid fears that a looming third wave could overwhelm understaffed medical facilities, as it did last year when infections peaked in March-May, killing about 178,000 people in those three months alone. “We hope that soon the counseling will start and doctors will start working again,” Dr. Manish Nigam, president of the Federation of Resident Doctors Association, said in a statement. “At a time when the country is passing through a third phase of COVID-19, and many doctors are affected with the disease, the ruling holds lots of significance for us.” As it may take even two months to complete the process, Mumbai-based Dr. Shariva Ranadive, whose admission has been delayed, told Arab News she is “disheartened” by the whole situation. “Hospitals were already strained, and now the infection is creating havoc among overworked hospital staff,” she said. “Many government hospitals are running on few staff members, with many of them getting infected.” Dr. Pravin Dhage of the Sion Hospital in Mumbai said 98 of 400 doctors at the facility were recently infected. “The hospitals are already feeling the pressure of an escalation in cases,” he added. “I feel that, if the situation continues in this way, we would be playing with many lives.” The situation is similar in Delhi, where doctor Dr. Harjit Singh Bhatti told Arab News that further delays would be a major challenge for medical workers. “I hope the admission process starts soon, otherwise it would be tough to manage the situation the way cases are exploding,” he said. “It would be a challenge for doctors to work with depleted manpower.”