No case of Delta plus in Delhi: Satyendar Jain

Delhi has not seen any case of the Delta plus variant of coronavirus so far, health minister Satyendar Jain said Wednesday.

“The last wave which Delhi witnessed was because of the Delta variant. Coronavirus mutates continuously. There are multiple variants such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc. There have been no cases of Delta plus variants in Delhi so far. We are aggressively preparing for any subsequent waves. We have not received any notice from the central government which states that there should be a particular kind of preparation for the Delta plus variant, but be it any variant, vaccination and using face masks are the two ways to prevent infection,” he said.

On Wednesday, the city saw 94 Covid cases, at a positivity rate of 0.12%. While 240 people recovered over the course of a day, six succumbed to the illness.

With a dip in the number of cases over the past month, the number of containment zones has also dropped from around 5,000 to 1,600 at present.

Jain said the two Genome Sequencing Labs being set up at Lok Nayak and ILBS hospitals will be functional in a week. “Earlier, such samples were sent to the Centre. Now Delhi is getting this technique too,” he said.

Speaking about the preparations for a subsequent wave of Covid cases, Jain said, “We are fully prepared. We had an availability of 28,000 Covid beds eventually in Delhi’s fourth wave. We are also preparing to expand availability .”