COVID-19 | Delhi sees second highest spike in cases

Over 60,000 COVID-19 tests done for third consecutive day

September 17, 2020 11:26 pm | Updated September 18, 2020 10:11 am IST - New Delhi

People queue up for rapid antigen test in north Delhi’s  Adarsh Nagar  on Thursday.

People queue up for rapid antigen test in north Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar on Thursday.

The Capital witnessed the second biggest spike in daily new COVID-19 count with 4,432 cases being reported in the past 24 hours, according to a health bulletin released by the Delhi government on Thursday. The total number of cases stood at 2,34,701.

The total number of daily tests was 60,0014, which was over the 60,000-mark for the third consecutive day.

Also, 38 more deaths have been reported, taking the total number of deaths to 4,877. This is the highest daily spike in the number of deaths in the two months in the city.

Over 30,000 active cases

Of the total cases, 1,98,103 people have recovered and there are 31,721 active cases. Of the total 14,652 beds available for COVID-19 treatment in the city, 52.9% were vacant, as per government data on Thursday.

However, 61.8% of the ICU beds with ventilators are occupied and 69.03% of the ICU beds without ventilators are full.

The positivity rate (percentage of people testing positive for every 100 tests done) has slightly gone up to 7.3% from 6.8% on Tuesday.

The number of containment zones jumped to 1,670 on Thursday, the highest till now.

Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that they were increasing ICU beds in hospitals and issued directions in this regard to private hospitals last week.

“In the Capital, we have increased the testing by four times. For 10-15 days there will be higher number of cases. But we will be able to isolate all the positive cases. After 10-15 days, this move will give positive result for us,” said the Minister.

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