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Daily cases surge past 1,000 as experts call for stricter enforcement of Covid norms
Tuesday’s daily tally was also the highest single day surge in number of cases that the city has seen since December 19 last year, when 1,139 new infections had been detected.
The number of new Covid-19 cases in Delhi surged past the 1,000-mark on Tuesday, with the city reporting 1,101 viral infections. This is also the first time that the city has recorded a four digit tally of daily cases, since December 20 last year — when 1,091 new cases had been reported.
Tuesday’s daily tally was also the highest single day surge in number of cases that the city has seen since December 19 last year, when 1,139 new infections had been detected, according to daily data released by the Delhi government.
The uptick in number of cases comes even as the Delhi government is looking to expand its ongoing vaccination drive in order to prevent a new wave of the disease surging through the city. The Delhi government has increased the number of vaccination sites and directed its centres to remain open for 12 hours from March 22 (Monday) onwards. On Tuesday, the Union government also announced that the vaccination drive will now be open for anyone over the age of 45 years even without comorbidities, even as the Delhi government asked the Centre to do away with the age cut-off altogether for people getting the jabs.
Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain in a tweet said, “The central government has allowed vaccination for everyone over the age of 45 years. The Delhi government has gone a step further and asked the Central government to allow everyone over the age of 18 years to get the vaccine. This will be an example not only for the country but for the entire world in beating Covid-19.”
On Tuesday, Delhi’s positivity rate — proportion of samples that return positive among the total tested — dipped slightly to 1.31% as compared to 1.32% recorded a day earlier. This was largely owing to 84,237 samples being tested on Monday — reported a day later in the health bulletin — as compared to 67,418 tests conducted on Sunday.
“There was euphoria among people when the number of infections in the city went down. With over 50% of the population exposed to the infection, the transmission had slowed down. But, people gathering for events, such as weddings, has again led to an increase. This is exactly what happened after Dussehra and Diwali,” said Dr GC Khilnani, former head of the department of pulmonary medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences and chairman of PSRI Institute of Pulmonary and Critical care.
Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung hospital said, “I am expecting the number of cases to increase two or three times, because people are not following Covid appropriate behaviour. People became complacent as the number of cases had come down. They thought that Covid is like any other infection. And then there is the vaccine euphoria.”
He added, “However, now to control the number of cases, there is a need for the government to strictly enforce certain restrictions, such as wearing masks in public. A local lockdown does not help much, as the spread inside the area continues and further it disrupts the economy and society within. Instead, there is a need for more communication with the people urging them to follow Covid appropriate measures.”
He also suggested vaccinating high risk categories, such as migrant workers, to slow down the transmission of the infection. So far, the city has immunised 324,654 people over the age of 60, 54,672 over the age of 45 with comorbidities, 281336 front line workers, and 185,527 health care workers. The turnout for the vaccination drive remained low on Tuesday — the second day of the expanded vaccination drive in Delhi — with only 33477 shots being administered. District officials say it was mainly due to the rain that kept people at home.
Not only the cases, the number of deaths due to the viral infection has also seen an uptick since Monday when seven deaths had been reported. On Tuesday, the city recorded four deaths due to the viral infection.
Just over 3 persons died of the infection each day on an average during the last seven days. In comparison, 2.4 people died each day for the two weeks before, and 1.1 on average each day the week before that, according to government data.
The increase in the number of deaths is following the trajectory of the increase in the number of infections, experts say.
“We have already started seeing an increase in the number of patients being admitted with severe disease over the last one week. The patients do not usually die on the very first day of admission; the severity of the infection peaks between the eight and 12th day. This means, if there is an increase in the number of cases today, the increase in the number of deaths will be seen only after ten days,” Dr Khilnani said.
