The surge in COVID-19 cases continued on Wednesday with the city witnessing 1,254 new cases in the last 24 hours – the highest in more than three months – taking the total number of cases to 6,51,227, according to a health bulletin released by the Delhi government.
This is the second day when more than 1,000 new cases have been reported this year. The last time more cases than this were reported was on December 18, with 1,418 new cases.
Wednesday’s bulletin also stated that six deaths were reported in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of deaths to 10,973. A total of 82,331 tests were done in a day, it said.
Of the total cases, 6,35,364 people have recovered and there are 4,890 active cases here at present.
On January 16, the number of new cases had dropped to 94 and it slowly increased to 200 on February 24 and it has been increasing since then.
Dr. Jugal Kishore, Head of Community Medicine Department, Safdarjung Hospital, said that Delhi is seeing a spike as people are not following social distancing measures and COVID-19-appropriate behaviour.
“The percentage of mutant strains is very less in Delhi. For instance, in South Africa, about 90% of the cases has the new strain. Also, there are no re-infections in India, apart from few exceptions. So these two factors cannot be responsible for the spike we are seeing, as per data available to us,” Dr. Kishore said. He also said that Delhi may not see a big spike since a large percentage of the population has already been infected, as per the last serological survey
“Recent report of genomic sequencing study showed that 15-20% of samples from Maharashtra had new mutations and this can be the reason behind the rise in cases. As there is no restriction on travel to Delhi, such mutant variant can be the cause of rise here,” Dr, Kishore also said.
Over 23,000 vaccinated
A total of 23,267 beneficiaries took the COVID-19 vaccination in Delhi on Wednesday and one minor Adverse Event Following Immunisation (AEFI) was reported till 6 p.m., a Delhi government spokesperson said.
“This report is provisional as sessions are going on in hospitals till 9 p.m. Also, there were lesser sessions today, with dispensary-based session sites not functional on Wednesday and Friday,” the spokesperson said.
For vaccinating people aged above 45 from April 1, the Delhi government is increasing the vaccination capacity. “Currently we have a capacity of 75,000-80,000 doses per day and we are increasing it every day. The Chief Minister has already said that we plan to increase it to 1.25 lakh doses per day,” an official said.
When asked if all above 45 years can get just walk in at any vaccination centre and get the shot without any pre-registration from April 1, the officer said, “Right now, you can either pre-register or just walk in, get registered and take the shot. Both these facilities are expected to continue from April 1. But we are yet to work out the finer details.”
According to Central government data, in Delhi, 46.34% of doses have been administered at private facilities till now.