Delhi on Saturday witnessed the highest daily new COVID-19 cases in about 50 days with 1,954 fresh cases being reported in the past 24 hours, according to a health bulletin released by the State government. The total number of cases stood at 1,71,366.
The number of active cases, positivity rate, COVID-positive people in home isolation also increased on Saturday. The last time the number of cases was more than this was on July 10 when 2,089 cases were reported.
15 more deaths
Fifteen more deaths have been reported, taking the total number of deaths to 4,404. Of the total cases, 1,52,922 people have recovered and there are 14,040 active cases.
The number of new cases is still less compared to June. On June 23, daily new cases touched almost 4,000, the highest so far, and since then it had been dropping.
But earlier this week, the daily new cases hit a 30-day high and then breached the 1,500 mark after remaining below the level for 39 consecutive days.
The number of active cases in the city on Saturday was the highest in over a month. The last time the number of active cases was more than this was on July 23 when the active cases were 14,554.
The active cases, which were 27,007 on July 1, had fallen to 9,897 on August 4, but since then have remained above the 10,000 mark.
The number of containment zones in the city has seen a sharp jump in the last 10 days from 560 on August 19 to 803 on Saturday. The number such zones, especially the smaller ones, is likely to go up further, said officials.
Though Delhi has a capacity to do around 11,000 RT-PCR tests in a day, only 6,597 such tests were done in the past 24 hours. The positivity was 8.8% on Saturday, which is higher than the levels earlier this month.