Delhi records highest single day 4,086 new COVID cases in 34 days

Delhi on Friday reported 4,086 new coronavirus cases — the highest single-day spike in 34 days, while the death toll from the virus has reached 6,189 in the national capital.

These new cases resulted from 58,568 tests conducted the previous day. With this, the total number of coronavirus cases in the city now stands above 3.48 lakh.

The previous highest single-day spike was recorded on September 19, when it stood at 4,071. Since then new COVID-19 cases were reported below the 4,000-mark until on October 23 in the capital.

Twenty-six more fatalities have been recorded, taking the death toll to 6,189, the bulletin said.

The tally of active cases on Friday rose to 26,001 from 25,237 the previous day.

The number of containment zones in Delhi increased to 2,777 from 2,766 on Thursday. The positivity rate on Friday stood at 6.98 per cent, while the recovery rate was over 90 per cent, the bulletin said, adding the case fatality rate stood at 1.78 per cent.

Meanwhile, Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal chaired a meeting of Delhi Disaster Management Authority to discuss the COVID-19 situation in Delhi. Lt Governor and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took a meeting with various stakeholder departments to discuss the situation.

According to the bulletin, out of the total number of 15,739 beds in COVID hospitals, 10,557 are vacant. It said that 606 beds in COVID care centres are occupied by persons under quarantine, including travellers who have returned by Vande Bharat Mission and bubble flights.

The Delhi government has significantly ramped up testing in the past few days, with the count on several times crossing the 60,000-mark. The number of Rapid Antigen Tests conducted on Thursday stood at 41,694 while the RT-PCR, CBNAAT and True NAAT tests figures were 16,874 in all, adding to 58,568, according to the bulletin.

The number of tests done per million, as on Friday was over 2.24 lakh while the total number of tests stood at over 42.5 lakh. The bulletin said that 3,16,214 patients have recovered, been discharged or migrated so far.

Since September, daily cases had begun to rise in the city. From the last week of September, it had started to come down a bit. The number of people in home isolation rose to 15,483 compared to 14,979 the previous day.

Meanwhile, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson and managing director of Bengaluru-based Biocon Ltd, has said she is hopeful that the vaccine will be in India by June, but added that delivering it to all Indians comes with its own challenges.