New Delhi: The capital recorded its highest single-day spike in
Covid-19 cases since the outbreak of the
pandemic with the city on Wednesday reporting 5,673 cases in the past 24 hours. It was also for the first time that the single-day Covid cases breached the 5,000-mark.
Among the 60,571 people tested for
coronavirus, 9.3% tested positive leading to 29,378 active cases which was 27,873 a day before. The city had reported 4,853 cases a day ago which was highest till then.
The positivity rate, which was 8.48% a day ago, climbed to 9.3%, one of the highest. The city also reported 40 deaths (including one death from August that was reported now), though 4,128 persons recovered in the last 24 hours. The recovery rate is also one of the highest so far.
Till now, Delhi has reported 3.7 lakh Covid-19 positive cases out of which 3.3 lakh people have recovered and 6,396 people have died, according to the daily Covid-19 update released by the health department.
The city currently has 29378 active Covid cases out of which 16,822 patients are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms and are recovering under home isolation.
The central government-formed expert committee headed by Dr V K Paul, earlier this month expressed apprehensions that the festival-related gatherings, winter months which make respiratory illnesses severer, and patients coming from outside Delhi could lead to sudden rise in Covid-19 cases.
The number of containment zones reached has 3,047 in the capital, highest so far.
Despite the rise in positive cases, the city has a huge number of beds vacant in Covid hospitals. A marginal increase in the beds occupancy in hospitals was reported on Wednesday. As compared to 5,453 occupied beds in Covid hospitals of the city a day ago, 5,665 beds were occupied on Wednesday. Delhi has 15,765 beds in government and private Covid hospitals out of which 10,100 were vacant indicating the huge availability of beds in the capital.
The number of deaths – 40- witnessed on Wednesday is lower than Tuesday when the city reported 44 fatalities.
The share of RT-PCR tests further increased in the total tests with 17,284 RT-PCR tests being conducted on Wednesday as compared to only 14,573 a day before. As compared to 42,637 rapid antigen tests conducted on Tuesday, the city conducted 43,287 tests on Wednesday. The share of RT-PCR has been growing after the government revised its Covid-19 management strategy where the focus was put on gold standard RT-PCR tests. Only 57,210 total tests were conducted on Tuesday.
The city’s cumulative positivity rate was 8.19%, case fatality rate is 1.73% and death rate based on last 10 days data is 0.99%.