Delhi's fightback story: Active Covid cases down 94% in 10 weeks

NEW DELHI: On November 14, 2020, when the capital was battling its third and deadliest Covid wave, 7,340 new cases and a positivity rate of 14.8% had been recorded. The number of active cases stood at 44,456 that day, the highest till date. Nine weeks from that Saturday, the number of active cases has crashed by 93.9% to 2,691 on January 16, when the first phase of vaccination started.

Over the past 24 hours, 299 new Covid-19 cases have been reported with a positivity rate of 0.4%. There were 96 fatalities on November 14, 2020, but it is down to single digit figures now.

Currently, 1,109 patients are admitted in hospitals, occupying less than 10% of the total 11,428 Covid-designated beds. While home isolation cases are 1,234, there are 49 patients admitted in Covid care centres. Out of the 1,408 Covid-19 ICU beds with ventilators, 1,094 are vacant and of the 2,737 Covid-19 ICU beds without ventilators, 2,545 are available.

"Well done Delhi! Delhi records the lowest number of Covid cases in the last 8 months. The positivity rate stands at an all-time low at 0.44%. With the resilience of Delhiites, we are committed to fight and beat Corona,"CM Arvind Kejriwal tweeted on Friday, when 295 fresh Covid cases had been recorded.

The number of active cases on Saturday was just 6% of active cases nine weeks ago. In slightly more than two months, 62 days to be precise, the number of cases have crashed by 41,765, which translates to a daily dip of around 674 cases.

The reason for the phenomenal fall in active cases is that while the number of people testing positive in Covid-19 tests has been going down, the number of patients recovering from the disease has been going up.

On January 16, the fresh cases were 299 from 71,957 tests, including 40,717 RT-PCR tests, which are considered much more reliable than rapid antigen tests. The number of recovered patients stood at 397. Since November 20, 2020, barring a few exceptions, every day the number of people recovering from Covid-19 has been higher than people testing positive.

Apart from aggressive testing and increased contract tracing, another strategy of Delhi government that has helped bring down the numbers is creation of micro-containment zones. Since December 2020, the number of containment zones has also been dipping. From over 6,000 in December, the number of red zones now stands at 2,416.