Delhi: Lowest (131 cases) single-day tally in almost four months

New Delhi: The capital recorded 131 fresh Covid-19 cases — the lowest since February 22. While the positivity rate dropped to 0.22%, 16 fatalities took place on Monday.

Monday’s death toll was the lowest since April 5, when 15 people had succumbed to the disease. With the positivity rate remaining below 1% mark for two weeks, Delhi government had on Sunday announced partial lifting of curbs on restaurants and weekly markets from June 14.

Since April 19, both daily cases and single-day death count had been spiralling up. On April 20, Delhi had reported 28,395 cases — the highest in the capital since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

On April 22, the case positivity rate was 36.2%, the highest so far. A total of 448 deaths were reported on May 3.

However, the number of cases has shown a downward trend of late. The positivity rate, too, has been shrinking.

In the past 24 hours, officials said, a total of 59,556 tests, including 47,357 RT-PCR tests were conducted. The total number of cases reported in the city so far stood at 14,31,270, while over 14 lakh patients have recovered from the virus. Delhi now has 3,226 active cases.

The occupancy of Covid beds also reduced to 7%, with only 2,013 of the total 27,546 beds currently occupied.

According to data shared by hospitals on the Delhi Corona App, of the 6,685 ICU beds, only 1,018 (15%) are occupied at the moment. “Most of the ICU beds are occupied by patients who were admitted a fortnight ago or before and were suffering from complications caused by the viral infection. This includes patients with secondary infections including mucormycosis,” doctors said.

Dr A K Grover, chairperson of department of ophthalmology at Apollo Hospital said they were conducting a study to assess the spread of mucormycosis in the first and the second wave. “Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the fungal infection is affecting younger patients and early in the disease course this time, as compared to the previous peak,” the doctor added.