The COVID-19 cases are declining in Delhi and weekend curfews have played a significant role in it, said Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Sunday. At least 18,286 new COVID-19 cases and 28 deaths were reported on Sunday.
Mr. Jain said the Delhi government was keeping a close watch on the trend and would monitor the situation for three to four days before taking a call on reviewing various curbs.
According to a health bulletin released by the Delhi government, 65,621 tests were conducted with a positivity rate of 27.87%. On Saturday, the positivity rate was 30.64%. There are 89,819 cases in the city of which 68,411 are under home isolation.
“On January 14, Delhi recorded 24,383 positive cases while on January 15, it was 20,178 cases. Today [Sunday], it dropped to 18,286 cases. The weekend curfew is proving to be beneficial, as fewer and fewer people are venturing out, limiting the spread of COVID-19. The number of cases is decreasing, but the government is still trying to implement the best practices,” Mr. Jain said.
15,000 beds
The Minister added that the government was prepared to deal with the most serious of situations and can arrange a total of 37,000 beds. At the moment, 15,000 beds are operational.
“We can double the number of beds overnight if necessary, but the number of hospitalised patients is currently low with 13,000 beds vacant. Patients who are hospitalised due to COVID are either unvaccinated or have comorbidities,” Mr. Jain said.
The Delhi Congress attributed the fall in number of cases to lesser testing and said the government has reduced COVID-19 testing to hide numbers.
‘Dip in testing’
Delhi Congress chief Ch. Anil Kumar said that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had been boasting that the government has the capacity to ramp up testing to 3 lakh per day, yet only over 67,000 tests were conducted on Saturday.
Mr. Jain said that Delhi was currently conducting more than three times the number of tests specified by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines. On January 12, when 27,561 new cases were recorded, the number of tests was 1,05,102. Since then, the number of tests have been going down every day.