The Delhi government on Thursday clarified that it will be conducting door-to-door testing for Covid-19 in only areas that are declared containment zones and not in the entire city.
In an exclusive interview to India Today TV's Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai, Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said Delhi is increasingly becoming more prepared to deal with coronavirus.
"All people living in containment zones will undergo mandatory tests for Covid-19," he said.
"From July 27, we are also starting the anti-body test in Delhi. It is a test that will tell whether someone has already been infected with coronavirus and recovered. For this, we have taken a sample size of 20,000 people," he said.
Manish Sisodia said the last one week can be called as the 'Week of Good Hope' for Delhi in its fight against coronavirus.
"It may be too early for me to say this but the week between June 8 and June 14 was the worst one for Delhi in terms of rise in cases. But the week after that, has given some hope that things are improving in Delhi," Manish Sisodia said.
Elaborating on this he said, earlier the government used to test about 6,000-7,000 people every day, of which around 2,000 used to test positive for Covid-19.
"But, today we are testing around 18,000 people every day and of them, around 3,000 are testing positive. This is a good sign. Besides this, the recovery rate in Delhi has increased. Earlier it was 41 per cent and now it is 58 per cent. The third aspect is that the growth rate of coronavirus cases has also reduced from 5.8 per cent to 4.9 per cent in Delhi," Manish Sisodia said.
He said if cases rise following the present growth rate of 4.9 per cent, then Delhi is likely to have around 4 lakh cases by July 31. When the growth rate was 5.8 per cent, the government had projected the case tally to hover around 5.5 lakh by July 31.
Speaking about the differences between the Delhi government, the Centre and the LG, Manish Sisodia said the government is only trying to raise issues in favour of the people of Delhi.
"We have often conveyed to the Centre and the LG that some of the directions issued by them are not in sync with the ground realities in Delhi. Having difference of opinion is not a problemwe have put forward our views and following this, the Centre has made changes in its directions too."