Delhi’s Covid-19 case count likely to hit 100k today, fatality rate at 3%

According to the Delhi government’s daily health bulletin on Sunday, the Capital’s Covid-19 tally was 99,444. Delhi has recorded 2,338 new cases of Covid-19 on average every day over the past week.

With 2,244 new cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Sunday, the total number of confirmed infections in the national capital stood just 556 away from the 100,000 mark, 126 days since the first case was recorded in Delhi on March 2.

With 32,477 tests per million on Sunday, Delhi has among the highest testing rates in the country once the population is factored in.(Sonu Mehta/HT Photo)

According to the Delhi government’s daily health bulletin on Sunday, the Capital’s Covid-19 tally was 99,444. Delhi has recorded 2,338 new cases of Covid-19 on average every day over the past week.

So far, 3,067 people have died due to the infection in the city, which means that Delhi has a case fatality rate (CFR) of 3%, slightly higher than the national average of 2.8%.

However, a silver lining for the national capital is the recovery rate, which on Saturday exceeded 70% for the first time. On Sunday, another 3,083 people recovered from the illness, taking the city’s recovery tally to 71,339, even as the testing numbers continue to rise.

This means there are around 25,000 “active cases” — those still living with the infection — in the city. “Active cases” are a crucial metric because they directly correspond to the strain on a region’s health care system.

According to the state government’s “Delhi Corona” app, the Capital has 15,161 beds for Covid-19 patients, of which 5,294 are occupied and 9,867 vacant as of Sunday.

With 32,477 tests per million on Sunday, Delhi has among the highest testing rates in the country once the population is factored in.

With nearly two-thirds of the Capital’s Covid-19 beds vacant, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday tweeted: “Less and less people in Delhi are now requiring hospitalisation, more and more people are getting cured at home.”

“Whereas there were around 2,300 new patients daily last week, no of patients in hospital has gone down from 6,200 to 5,300. Today, 9,900 corona beds are free,” he said in another tweet.

Just over one in five people admitted to hospitals with Covid-19 in Delhi are admitted to intensive care units.

Testing numbers in the city have gone up since the commencement of rapid antigen tests on June 18, as part of the Centre and state governments’ efforts to stabilise the Covid-19 situation in the Capital. While the rapid tests were initially limited to the city’s containment zones initially, administrations in all 11 revenue districts of the city began conducting these tests from Friday, in a move to bring a greater proportion of the population under the testing net.

The increase in the daily testing and the change in testing strategy to include asymptomatic people has meant that the positivity rate of cases has also dropped. The average weekly positivity rate, which was 21.6% two weeks ago, has since dropped to 11.6% on Sunday, though it still remains one of the highest in the country. At its peak, this number crossed 30% on June 16, which meant that nearly one out of every three tests was coming back positive.

Government reports seen by HT showed that till Friday, 181,883 antigen tests were conducted across Delhi, of which 13,100 people were found positive. As per these reports, Shahdara district had the highest antigen test positivity rate in the national capital — 11.29%, while the most tests had, as of Friday, been conducted in south-west district.

Jugal Kishore, head of the community medicine department at Safdarjung Hospital, said: “Our recoveries have more or less been on international lines. In fact, the recovery rate will get much higher in the coming days because the new cases that are being detected are mostly mild or asymptomatic. We have also had far fewer deaths than estimated earlier, which is positive as well, showing that we our understanding of the virus has evolved from the initial situation.”