No Covid deaths in capital for 1st time since 2nd wave

New Delhi: After 138 days and for the first time since the deadly second Covid-19 wave hit the city, Delhi recorded no deaths in the past 24 hours on Sunday. With 51 new cases, the positivity rate dipped to 0.07%.

Health minister Satyendar Jain tweeted: “No death has been reported in Delhi due to Covid in the last 24 hours. 51 positive cases have been reported in the last 24 hours. With this, the total active cases have come down to just 592. Follow Covid-appropriate behaviour and contribute to this fight.”

This year, zero fatalities were reported on five other occasions — February 9, 13, 17 and 25 and March 2. This year’s lowest number of Covid-19 cases in a single day, 45, was seen on July 12. On March 2, there were 217 new cases with a positivity rate of 0.33%. Since then, the graph kept going up and hit the all-time high of 25,986 cases on April 28. On May 3, Delhi saw the highest number of fatalities in a single day at 448.

While March recorded 117 fatalities with a daily average of 3.7, April saw 5,120 deaths, the highest in a single month since 2,663 deaths were seen in November 2020. May, however, saw 8,090 deaths. Compared with the daily average of 171 deaths in April, the figure went up to 262 in May. May accounted for almost every third death since the first case was detected and, along with April, for more than 50% of the toll of 25,027.

June, however, saw the number of deaths come down considerably to 740, a daily average of 24.7. The figure dipped further this month. Till date, July has witnessed 50 fatalities with a daily average of 2.7.

On Sunday, 71,546 tests, including 50,157 RT-PCR tests and 21,389 Rapid Antigen Tests, were conducted. On July 5, positivity rate dipped to 0.09% and, after hovering between 0.11% and 0.12% through the week, dropped to 0.07%. The overall positivity rate this month has been 0.1%, while it was 0.36% last month.

A fortnight ago, the number of active cases dipped below the 1,000-mark for the first time in over a year. With 80 patients recovering in the last 24 hours, the number of active cases has now dropped to 592. There were 203 patients in home isolation, while 330 were admitted in hospitals. Out of 12,780 hospital beds, 12,450 were vacant. Out of 3,749 Covid ICU beds, 3,589 were vacant at 9pm on Sunday, which included 1,291 out of 1,417 beds with ventilators.