daily tally of COVID-19 Cases crossed the 20,000 mark on Saturday, with 20,181 new cases of infection reported in the capital. Delhi further ramped up testing with 1,02,956 tests conducted on Friday, according to Saturday’s bulletin.
Despite the government ramping up the number of tests, the positivity rate – the proportion of total samples returning positive – has continued to reach 19.6% on Saturday. In comparison, when Delhi last conducted over 1,00,000 tests a day – during a 10-day period in April last year – the positivity rate ranged from 4.9% to 15.9%.
The increase in the positivity rate has also been quite rapid during the current wave of infections. It rose from less than 1% to 19.6% within 11 days; During delta version Ripple, which operated in April-May last year, took 28 days for a similar increase, data shows.
Despite the sharp rise in cases, the number of hospitalizations remains low. Delhi currently has 48,178 active cases, out of which 1,586 are admitted in hospitals. When there were about 50,000 active cases during the delta wave, there were more than 8,800 persons in hospitals, while cases were rising and more than 14,000 cases were declining.
“At present, 10% of beds in hospitals are full and 90% are vacant. About 13,300 beds are still available for patients… When Delhi had the same number of cases last time, six-seven times more patients were hospitalised. Most people are having mild illness this time and they can recover in home isolation. They can break home isolation after seven days, provided they do not have symptoms for three consecutive days, Health Minister Satyendar Jain said in a video briefing on Saturday.
According to an order by Deputy Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) Ajay Bisht, the Delhi government ordered an increase of 1,300 beds for Covid-19 patients in its 14 hospitals. Of these, 2,075 will be ICU beds. There will also be 2,800 beds in eight Kovid health centers for isolation of people who do not have enough space at home.
According to the bulletin, Delhi also reported seven more deaths due to Covid-19, taking the death toll in January to 36. There were only nine deaths in the month of December, seven in the month of November, four in October and five in September. per data.
“Almost all the deaths occurred in patients who had co-morbid conditions and were admitted to the hospital for other treatments,” Jain said. He said that no death has been confirmed in the cases. omicron,
With cases rising, the Delhi government only indexes the proportion of positive cases and not all cases, as was being done till the new year. Delhi reported 48 cases of the new Omron variant on Saturday, bringing the total to 513.
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