Delhi’s Covid-19 tally crosses one lakh, but recoveries also rise

The grim milestone of cases over a lakh-mark comes on the day when Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal assured the citizens to not panic, while also urging cured patients to donate their plasma as “it is effective in reducing the risk of death”.

Delhi’s Covid-19 tally crossed the one lakh mark on Monday after 1,379 new cases, the state health department said.

A family visits the Qutab Minar monument after monuments across India were reopened after almost four moths of lockdown to control the spread of coronavirus, in New Delhi. (AP)

The national capital’s tally now stands at 1,00,823 while the death toll mounted to 3,115 after 48 casualties in the last 24 hours.

The number of activeCovid-19 cases now stands at 25,620 while 72,088 people have recovered from the virus. Delhi’s recovery rate is now 71.49%.

After a surge in Covid-19 cases for much of the last month, Delhi seems to have gotten a hold on rising numbers and the number of people testing positive for the virus has been declining steadily.

Since June 16, Delhi has seen a sharp rise in the number of cases with the daily figures ranging between 2,000 and 3,000. On June 23, it saw its highest single-day spike of 3,947 cases

On Monday, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said there was no reason to panic despite the Covid-19 tally going past the one lakh mark and pointed to the number of recoveries to underline his claim.

“In the last three months, the total number of corona patients in Delhi has reached approximately 1 lakh. But there is no need to worry or panic because out of these one lakh people, 72,000 cases have recovered. The recovery rate in Delhi has gone up to 72 per cent, which is a huge figure,” Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal also said that his government was making all efforts to increase ICU beds for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

The average positivity rate - the rate at which samples test positive - has decreased to 11.6% from 21.6% two weeks ago.

Delhi has tested 6,57,383 people, out of which 5,327 RT-PCR tests and 8,552 rapid antigen tests were conducted on Monday.