With 1,404 new COVID-19 cases being reported in the Capital in the past 24 hours, the active cases increased for the fourth consecutive day after decreasing for 15 days continuously in July, according to a health bulletin released by the Delhi government on Saturday.
The total number of cases stood at 1,44,127. Of the total, 1,29,362 people have recovered and 10,667 are active cases. Also, 16 more deaths have been reported, taking the total number of deaths to 4,098.
Number of tests
The number of active cases, which was 27,007 on July 1 had fallen to 9,897 — below the 10,000 mark in months — on August 4, but since then it has been increasing.
The number of new cases is also the highest in the past 21 days, but the number of tests done in the past 24 hours as per the bulletin is also the highest since at least July 1.
The number of new cases has been less than 1,500 for the past 23 consecutive days, which is less compared to June. On June 23, daily new cases touched almost 4,000 — highest so far — and since then it has been dropping.
Of the total 24,592 tests done in the past 24 hours, 77.6% of the tests were rapid antigen tests, which have shown a low positivity in the city compared to RT-PCR tests. Though Delhi has a capacity to do around 11,000 RT-PCR tests in a day, only 5,500 such tests were done in the past 24 hours.
From July 1 to Saturday, the number of COVID-19 positive people in home isolation has also decreased from 16,703 to 5,372.
Positivity rate, which is the percentage of people who test positive, has dropped from 12.2% to 5.7%.
The number of containment zones in the city was 478 on Saturday.