NEW DELHI: Breaking all previous records, Covid-19 cases again reached a single-day highest at 5,891. On Thursday, the city had reported 5,739 cases while 5,673 cases had been reported the previous day — both single-day peaks. For the last eight days, the daily number of Covid cases has been consistently rising, except on Monday, when only 2,832 cases were reported due to fewer number of tests conducted.
A total of 47 people died on Friday, taking the total number of fatalities to 6,470. In the last 24 hours, 4,433 people have recovered. Compared with a day ago, the tally of both deaths and recoveries has increased.
The number of Covid-19 cases marginally increased, despite a small dip in the number of tests. Among 59,641 people tested on Friday, 9.8% tested positive, taking the active cases to 32,363.
The government has said it is prepared and closely monitoring the situation, and stressed that there is no immediate crisis of beds or health infrastructure. Experts attributed the spike to aggressive contact tracing and testing, particularly the jump in RT-PCR tests. Other than that, seasonal change and pollution, which push respiratory illnesses, and lack of Covid-appropriate behaviour among people were also blamed.
Health minister Satyendar Jain has speculated that it may be the “third Covid-19 wave”, but also remarked that it would be too early to conclude that without watching the trend for a week.
The Covid-19 positivity rate, which was 9.5% a day before, climbed to 9.8%, one of the highest. However, the recovery rate is also at one of the highest levels. Till now, Delhi has reported 3.8 lakh Covid-19 positive cases out of which 3.4 lakh people have recovered, according to the daily update released by the health department. The rising number of active cases has pushed the number of containment zones to 3,158.