NEW DELHI: The capital recorded 823 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday and witnessed a positivity rate of more than 1% for the second day in a row. In fact, this week more Covid cases have been seen than the entire month of February.
After witnessing a constant dip in fresh cases of the coronavirus since February, the numbers have been growing over the last fortnight, but the pace increased last week. In all, 4,288 cases and 15 fatalities were seen between March 15 and 21 with an average positivity rate of over 0.8%.
The 823 Covid-19 cases reported on Sunday were from 79,714 tests carried out in the past 24 hours, including 51,043 RT-PCR and 28,671 rapid antigen tests. One fatality was reported on Sunday taking the total death toll to 10,956.
Till date in March, 8,695 cases have been recorded with an average of 414 per day. The average number of cases this week was 612. Compared with the average figure of 150 recorded in February, the last week saw a fourfold increase.
Nearly 14.5 lakh tests have been carried out in March with a daily average of 66,301. The overall positivity rate is 0.6% till now. Last month saw 58,545 tests carried out daily on average with a positivity rate of 0.2%.
With 613 Covid patients recuperating in the last 24 hours, the number of active cases has spiked to 3,618. A month ago, on February 21, there were 1,071 active cases. The number has gone up three times in the last four weeks. The increase has been almost 238% in one month. In fact, the number has gone up by almost 60% from a week ago. Last Sunday, there were 2,262 active cases.
The overall cases were 6,47,984 on Sunday, with a cumulative positivity rate of 4.7%. In total, 6,33,410 patients have recovered from the disease till date, a recovery rate of 97.7%.
While it seemed in mid-February that the number of active Covid cases might go below the 1,000-mark, it slowly started going up. The number of those recuperating was lower, resulting in active Covid cases witnessing a significant jump every week since February 14.
The number of patients admitted in hospitals was 892, with 4,818 dedicated beds being available. There were 10 patients admitted in dedicated Covid Care Centres with 5,511 vacant beds.
All the 67 beds in dedicated Covid Health Centre were vacant on Sunday. The number of patients recuperating in home isolation has reached 1,893, while the figure of containment zones, which was 556 on February 28, reached 766 on Sunday.