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Delhi records jump in severe cases, central team visits containment areas
New Delhi
New Delhi
Delhi recorded 310 new Covid-19 cases on Monday, taking the city’s count to 7,233, according to the daily health bulletin released by the Delhi government. The death toll remained at 73 as no fatalities were recorded on Monday.
The government had on Sunday mandated that all Covid-19 hospital send death reports at 5pm everyday to ensure the timely reporting of deaths.
HT had earlier pointed out a discrepancy in the number of deaths being reported in Delhi government’s health bulletin and individual hospital toll count.
The new cases bring Delhi’s doubling rate to just over 10 days from 13 days in April end. The number of people in the intensive care units of the city have doubled from around 50 persons in April end to 97 on May 11. The number of people on ventilators has gone up from disproportionately from just 5 on April 30 to 22 on May 11.
Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung hospital said, “The number of people on ventilator going up does not mean that the severity of the disease is going up. We know that around 2 to 3% of those infected will develop severe symptoms and as more cases come more people will need ventilators. But why it has not gone up proportionally is because a person on a ventilator will not recover in just seven days and go home unlike those with mild symptoms.”
“The doubling rate shows how much time it takes for the number of cases to double, which indicates the spread of the disease. We have to aim to increase this doubling rate. Although positivity -- or the percentage of people who test positive among those tested -- is a better metric of understanding the spread in the population, but it will only work when a lot of tests are being done,” said Dr Kishore.
Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain had blamed the spike in the number of Covid-19 cases in May on reports of pending samples coming in. “The doubling rate of Covid-19 cases in Delhi has come down and the reason for this is that several pending reports – in thousands -- are now coming back,” Jain had said.
Of the 5,031 people still with the infection, 1,623 are admitted to 10 designated Covid-19 hospitals in the city. Another 1,560 people with mild to moderate symptoms have been admitted to the Covid Care Centres or Covid Health Centres. In Delhi, 981 people with the infection have been put under home isolation, according to the data.
The report shows that so far 2,129 people have recovered from the viral infection. The recovery rate of Delhi is over 29%, almost the same as the national average. It is much better than Mumbai, which has the highest number of cases in the country and a recovery rate of almost 19%.
A team of central experts visited some containment area and a migration camp in Delhi on Sunday. “The report is being prepared,” said an official not wanting to be named.
The Delhi government on Monday de-sealed A-block in Mansarovar Garden in west district after no new Covid-19 case was reported from the locality in the last 28 days.
This visit is part of an ongoing exercise in which central teams assist the state in containing the spread of the disease. So far, 50 such teams have been sent to different states. The latest batch was sent to 10 states where the maximum cases were being reported -- Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
