Highest single-day Covid in over two months in Delhi

The trend of rising Covid-19 cases in Delhi continued on Friday as the city reported 431 new infections, the highest single-day rise in over two months, or since January 9, with experts warning that the Capital may be looking at the start of the fourth Covid wave

The trend of rising Covid-19 cases in Delhi continued on Friday as the city reported 431 new infections, the highest single-day rise in over two months, or since January 9, with experts warning that the Capital may be looking at the start of the fourth Covid wave.

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The seven-day average of daily cases, also known as the case trajectory, in the Capital has now been rising for 18 straight days – this number has gone from 134 for the week ending on February 22 to 339 in the last week. This means that Delhi is now reporting, on average, 200 more cases every day than what it was less than three weeks ago.

With 72,031 tests conducted, the positivity rate – proportion of samples that test positive among total tested – stood at 0.60%, which was again the highest since January 9.

To keep new infections in check, Delhi government officials said they are focussing on tracing as many as 30 contacts for every positive case recorded. “We are focussing on aggressive contact tracing. For every case, we are tracing a minimum of 30 contacts and keeping them under surveillance. We are trying to contain the infection before it has a chance to spread again,” said a senior district level official on condition of anonymity.

Only half as many contacts were being traced on average in November beginning, when Delhi had witnessed its third surge in the number of infections.

Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain had in November said, “If a person tests positive then his entire family and the people in contact have to be tested, thus more cases of Covid-19 were recorded. Earlier six-seven contacts of a positive person were traced, now this number has crossed 15.”

The district official also added that in addition to contact tracing, focus was also on increasing the number of tests and vaccinations. “To control the spread, we are also testing more people to ensure we pick up as many cases as we can. This also helps in detecting asymptomatic cases among the floating population that travels between states. We already have protocols for testing international passengers,” the official said.

The Centre on Thursday had said that Delhi-NCR was also becoming one of the regions of concern where Covid-19 was seeing an uptick.

“There is spike in cases in Maharashtra and Kerala too. But there is a difference. The positivity rates in those states are high. In Delhi, the positivity rate has been lower than 1% for more than two months now. The government is prepared in all aspects of Covid-19 management, and we have maintained tests at scaled-up levels,” Delhi’s health minister Satyendar Jain told reporters outside the Delhi assembly on Friday.

Experts believe that the spread of the infection is under control if the positivity rate remains below 5% for over two weeks.

In Delhi, 202,970 people over the age of 60 or over the age of 45 with comorbidities have received one dose of a vaccine against Covid-19. There are 261,165 frontline workers and 171,120 healthcare workers who have got at least one shot, according to government data.

This means, only 3.1% of Delhi’s population of 20 million has received at least one dose of the vaccine. And, only 0.5% of the population has received both doses completing their immunisation.

Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung hospital said, “Our team did a modelling to see the impact of measures like masking and social distancing on the spread of Covid-19. What we saw is that even with vaccination, if we stop following these norms the number of cases could increase manifold. The recent serosurveillance study shows that over 50% of the people in Delhi have already been exposed to the infection and yet there is an increase in case. It will take a long time to develop that level of herd immunity through immunisation.”

“We need to continue following the Covid-19 norms; there is Holi this month and celebrations should be curtailed to ensure we do not see a surge like after Diwali,” he said.