Delhi: Covid positivity rate dips below 5%, first time since October 6

Delhi on Thursday conducted over 75,000 tests for Covid-19, and reported 3,734 new cases of the virus. This brought the daily positivity rate – proportion of samples that return positive among the total tested – to below 5% for the first time since October 6, when a positivity rate of 4.9% had been recorded.

Delhi on Thursday conducted over 75,000 tests for Covid-19, and reported 3,734 new cases of the virus. This brought the daily positivity rate – proportion of samples that return positive among the total tested – to below 5% for the first time since October 6, when a positivity rate of 4.9% had been recorded.

A health worker in PPE kit collects a swab sample from a man to test for Covid-19 infection, at Bengali Market, in New Delhi, India, on December 3, 2020. (Photo: Amal KS/Hindustan Times)

The city on Thursday also reported 82 more deaths, taking the total toll of the infection to 9,424, as per Thursday’s bulletin.

Delhi’s positivity rate stood at 4.96% on Thursday, which is the lowest in 204 days — when the same positivity rate was reported on May 13. Experts state that the spread of the infection has been controlled when a positivity rate of 5% or less is maintained for at least two weeks.

Since the government started sharing daily testing data, Delhi has never seen a positivity rate of less than 5% for a period of two weeks. The positivity rate had remained between 5% and 6% for 17 days consecutively from September-end to mid-October.

The numbers had started going up again leading to the “third wave” of cases in November. At its peak, the positivity rate in Delhi stood at 15.3% on November 15 during the current surge in cases. The highest ever positivity rate was almost 37% recorded on June 13, during the first surge of cases in the city.

“Positivity declined to 5% today from 15.26% on Nov 7. Highest total tests 78949 and highest RTPCR test 36370 ever with lowest RTPCR positivity of 8.99%. Steadily corona cases and positivity coming down. Hope this will continue. Please observe all precautions,” Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain had tweeted on Wednesday.

Experts believe that the surge in cases seen in November was due to the festive season and the number of cases and positivity rate are likely to continue declining.

“People were out, markets were flooded, and precautions were not being followed during the festive season due to which there had been an increase in the number of cases. Now, even though there is traffic on the road, get togethers are not happening and hence the transmission has gone down. And, now with so many people having been exposed to the infection, it is likely that Delhi will not have huge surge in cases. There would be fewer cases in those who have still not been exposed to the infection,” said Dr Shobha Broor, former head of the department of microbiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).