A health worker in a mobile Covid-19 testing van takes swab samples in Ashok Nagar on Sunday. (Express Photo: Gajendra Yadav)

The capital’s Covid-19 death toll touched 4,004 on Sunday. The city’s fatality rate had remained around the 2.9% mark for most part of July.

Over the last 24 hours, 15 people died in the city, the least in several weeks. The percentage of active cases to overall cases in the city dipped to 7.5% as 961 new cases were reported on Sunday.

The city has so far seen 1,37,677 cases overall, of which 1,23,317 people have recovered already. While 2,902 people are admitted in hospitals, 5,663 are under home isolation. Of those admitted in hospitals, 373 are on ventilator support.

Delhi, which was struggling with a high fatality rate till June, has managed to bring down the number of deaths from an average of 73 per day in early June to around 25 per day this week.

According to health department officials, better understanding of the disease and better protocols are behind the reduction in deaths.

“Things like recognising the right time to introduce the trial plasma therapy, oxygen availability on most beds and oximeters being given to people under home isolation have helped a lot. Because the disease was so new to everyone, we were still evolving a mechanism that would be most effective in saving critical patients and stopping the advancement of symptoms in patients with moderate or severe symptoms. We have realised that providing oxygen to patients early on if their statistics start to dip helps. People are also more aware now and bring patients under home isolation to the hospitals timely,” said the official.