Daily tally past 1,000 for first time this year in Delhi

NEW DELHI: The daily count of Covid-19 in Delhi crossed the 1,000 mark on Tuesday with 1,101 more people testing positive for the viral infection. This is the highest single-day count in nearly three months. On December 19, 1,139 cases were recorded in a single day.

Tuesday’s 1,101 cases came out of 84,237 tests — 52,099 RT-PCR and 32,138 Rapid Antigen — conducted over the past 24 hours, officials in the state health department said, adding that the positivity rate had gone up to 1.31%.

Four fresh fatalities were recorded in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 10,967, while the total tally of cases reached over 6.49 lakh. The Covid-19 caseload in Delhi on January 1 stood at over 6.25 lakh. The number of daily cases had started to come down in February. The month’s highest daily count of 256 cases was recorded on February 26.

However, since March 1, cases in the capital have been rising steadily. Delhi has recorded 10,684 cases in the last 23 days with a daily average of 465. The city had registered 888 cases on Monday, 823 on Sunday, 813 on Saturday, 716 on Friday, 607 on Thursday, 536 on Wednesday and 425 on Tuesday, according to official data.

A senior doctor at Lok Nayak Hospital said, “There has been a sharp increase in Covid-19 cases over the past week. A similar trend was observed in states like Maharashtra and Punjab recently. Complacency and non-adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour is responsible for this, but we cannot rule out the possibility of the spread of mutated strains of the novel coronavirus as yet.”

The hospital has treated over two dozen cases of the UK variant of the viral infection. Recently, it confirmed the presence of the South Africa variant in a 33-year-old man, a resident of Kerala, with a history of travel to the country.

A doctor at BLK Superspecialty Hospital said the demand for hospital beds had also gone up in the last few days. The hospital, situated in central Delhi, has 70 beds reserved for Covid-19 patients of which 61% were occupied on Tuesday, data on Delhi Corona app showed. The occupancy of beds at hospitals like Jaipur Golden, Sir Ganga Ram, Max Shalimar Bagh and Holy Family stood at 82%, 71%, 44% and 44%, respectively. At AIIMS Trauma Centre, 43 patients were admitted.

Overall, the data shared on Delhi Corona app showed that 1,030 (18%) of 5,740 Covid-19 beds were occupied across the city. The occupancy of ICU beds with and without ventilator support was 21% each. In addition, there were 2,316 patients under home isolation and 14 undergoing treatment at Covid Health Centres, said an official.