Capital adds over 20k cases; nearly 89% beds still vacant
Seven more people in the city succumbed to the infection, showed data released by the government on Saturday.
Delhi on Saturday added over 20,000 cases of Covid-19 for the first time in nearly 250 days, as the fifth wave of infections continued to spread across the city, even as hospitalisations remained a fraction of the Capital’s total caseload, with around 89% of the city’s reserved beds vacant.
Seven more people in the city succumbed to the infection, showed data released by the government on Saturday.
The city recorded 20,181 fresh cases of Covid-19 on Saturday, infections that came as daily tests jumped past the 100,000 mark for the first time since mid-April last year. Of the 102,965 samples collected on Saturday, 19.6% returned positive results, showed the state government’s health bulletin.
The test positivity rate is now the highest it has been since May 9 last year, when the statistic hit 21.67%.
Currently, 48,178 patients in the city are fighting Covid-19.
However, a vast majority of hospital beds kept aside for Covid-19 patients in the city continue to remain vacant. The bulletin showed that 1,586 people were admitted to hospitals in the city with the infection, leaving nearly 89% (over 12,500) Covid-19 beds in the city free as of Saturday evening.
Hospitalisation rates in Delhi have risen much slower than cases have as the city battles a fifth wave of Covid-19 infections, which experts and authorities have said is likely being driven by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Experts have said that while the variant is highly transmissible, it is also much less likely to cause severe illness, and resultant hospitalisations, especially when compared with the Delta variant that fuelled Delhi’s fourth (and India’s second) wave of infections.
Testing has also picked up over the past week, as the state looks to increase daily sampling to around 300,000.