Delhi added 46,000 new cases last week, the highest in India

Amit.Bhattacharya

New Delhi: The city emerged as India’s Covid-19 capital last week, logging the highest number of fresh cases and also recording the sharpest rise in infections compared with the previous week.

Delhi added 46,159 new cases in the week (November 1-8), pushing Kerala (45,979) and Maharashtra (36,083) to the second and third spots, respectively. Crucially, weekly cases in Kerala and Maharashtra continued to fall while in Delhi cases have been rising for several weeks now.

On Monday, Delhi reported 5,063 new cases, the highest in India for the second day running. The day’s count fell sharply across India with testing at a six-week low. There were 71 deaths in Delhi.

Haryana, Himachal & T’gana also see spike in weekly cases

Last week’s case count in Delhi was 10,445 higher than the number recorded in the previous week (October 25-November 1). This was the sharpest rise in the pandemic during these seven days. Neighbouring Haryana came next, with infections having risen by 3,348 over the previous week, followed by Himachal Pradesh (1,552) and Telangana (1,487).

While these four states logged the highest spikes in the pandemic, smaller increases were reported from Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Jharkhand.

On the brighter side, the virus continued to recede in several major states. The drop in cases from the previous week was the sharpest in Karnataka, where infections were down by 4,420, followed by Maharashtra (-2,672), Andhra Pradesh (-1,942), Tamil Nadu (-1,221) and Kerala (-1,221).

However, the fall in cases appears to be flattening out in big states such as Karnataka and Maharashtra. In the week before last (October 25-November 1), Karnataka had registered a much steeper fall of nearly 13,000 cases while Maharashtra saw a decrease of close to 11,000.

In the previous two weeks, Kerala had reported the highest number of fresh infections in the country, with Maharashtra falling to second place. Till four weeks ago, Maharashtra had led the weekly numbers since March.

Nationally, fresh cases registered an increase last week (November 1-8) after falling for seven straight weeks since mid-September. Cumulatively, the country saw cases rise by 6,309 in the week. In the previous week, infections had fallen by 42,373.

On Monday, fresh cases in the country had fallen to 35,271, with numbers from Chhattisgarh yet to come in till late at night. The count drops sharply every Monday because of lower testing and staff shortages over the weekend. This Sunday, 8,35,401 tests were conducted across the country, the lowest since September 27.