Delhi records over 600 cases of Covid-19 for fourth time this year

The 654 infections recorded on January 6 were the city’s highest this year, while daily cases crossed 600 twice more that month. Delhi's active caseload, meanwhile, increased to 2,924.

The spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) continued unabated in the national capital Delhi, which recorded 607 new cases of the disease on Thursday, according to the health department. This comes on a day when chief minister Arvind Kejriwal chaired a meeting over a possible fresh wave of the pandemic in the national capital.

Coronavirus: Delhi government health team members at the IGI international Airport wearing masks as precaution (File Photo/HT).

The national capital’s infection tally rose to 645,632 after Thursday's spike in cases, while the death toll increased to 10,949 with one related fatality, the health department bulletin showed. Also, the city’s active caseload reached 2,924, an increase of 222 cases from Wednesday. Recovered cases, meanwhile, are at 631,759, with 384 more patients recovering from the viral disease.

Thursday’s rise means that Delhi has recorded more than 500 Covid-19 cases in a day five times in 2021: 654 cases were detected on January 6, the highest for the city this year, while on two other days that month, more than 600 infections were found in Delhi. On Wednesday, the city’s infection tally had gone up by 536, the first time in nearly 10 weeks that the capital saw more than 500 daily new cases.

The national capital’s new Covid-19 cases on March 18 were from 80,253 samples that were tested for the viral disease, less than 80,856 from a day ago. A total of 13,589,523 tests have been conducted in Delhi thus far, including 48,737 RT-PCR/CBNAAT/TrueNat tests and 31,516 Rapid antigen tests.

Addressing a virtual press conference on Thursday evening, Kejriwal urged people not to panic, assuring that his government was monitoring the situation closely. The chief minister further requested people to get vaccinated against the disease and called upon the central government to relax vaccination norms, promising that if norms are relaxed, the Delhi government would get all residents of the city vaccinated in three months.