Close to 800 cases in a day take Delhi’s Covid-19 tally over 15k, deaths cross 300

On Tuesday, for the first time in a week, Delhi recorded less than 500 cases. Delhi has recorded 15,257 infections in 86 days, since the first case of a 45-year-old man from Mayur Vihar was reported on March 2.

After registering a dip in Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, new infections in Delhi rose to 792 on Wednesday, according to the daily health bulletin from the Delhi government.

The health bulletin stated Delhi had recorded 15 more deaths, tipping the Covid-19 toll in the city to more than 300. (Sanchit Khanna/HT PHOTO)

On Tuesday, for the first time in a week, Delhi recorded less than 500 cases. Delhi has recorded 15,257 infections in 86 days, since the first case of a 45-year-old man from Mayur Vihar was reported on March 2.

The health bulletin stated Delhi had recorded 15 more deaths, tipping the Covid-19 toll in the city to more than 300. So far, 303 people have succumbed to the viral infection, taking the mortality rate to almost 2%, which is lower than the national average of 2.8%.

Not only are more people being tested, but the city’s positivity rate – the percentage of people testing positive among those tested – rose to 13.7% on Wednesday from 7.6% on May 18, when Delhi recorded 299 cases, one of the lowest numbers reported this month.

This brings Delhi closer to the third scenario for which the government had been asked to prepare for by an advisory committee – that of 1,000 cases being reported a day. The first scenario was 100 cases being reported a day, and the second was of 500 cases being reported a day.

Lalit Kant, former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said: “The lockdown was like a lid. People were staying indoors and not coming in contact with a lot of people, reducing the chances of infection. Once you lift the lid, more people are bound to get infected. That is the normal course of the infection.

“The chances of the virus dying down on its own are minimal, it hasn’t happened in any country. The lockdown gave us time to prepare our systems. What we need to do is keep our vulnerable safe – the old, people with compromised immune systems, the poor who are bearing the brunt of the lockdown and do not have good nutrition – to reduce mortality from infections.”

The Delhi government had said it is prepared to handle 1,000 cases a day. Currently, 30% of all active cases in the city are admitted to hospitals, meaning 1,000 cases a day will lead to around 300 hospital admissions.

According to the Delhi government, there are currently 4,462 Covid-19 beds in the city’s healthcare facilities, 429 ICU beds, 343 beds with ventilators, and 2,632 beds with oxygen support. Another 5,716 beds are available in 19 Covid care centres for isolation of mild cases.

Half of all Covid-19-positive patients with mild symptoms in the city are in home isolation.

However, Delhi’s mortality rate has been slowly inching upwards since the three-member death audit committee started adding backlog deaths to the cumulative report from May 12. With 86 deaths and 7,639 cases in total, the mortality rate was 1.1% on May 12.