The surge in COVID-19 cases continued for the third consecutive day on Monday with the city reporting 888 new cases in 24 hours — the highest in about three months.
The case tally now stands at 6,48,872. Delhi had registered 823 cases on Sunday, 813 on Saturday.
Seven deaths were also reported in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of deaths to 10,963 — this is the highest number of fatalities since February 4.
Earlier in the day, Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal chaired a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority to review the COVID-19 situation and the ongoing vaccination exercise.
Mr. Baijal issued directions to ensure that the authorities concerned kept their guard up against the virus, especially during the upcoming festive season, according to Raj Niwas.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Health Minister Satyendar Jain, the Chief Secretary, the Delhi Police Commissioner, AIIMS director Randeep Guleria, Professor Balram Bhargava of the ICMR, and S.K. Singh of the the NCDC were among those present at the meeting.
On recent hike in cases
After deliberations with experts and keeping in view the recent hike in COVID cases in the city, the need to be more vigilant and ensuring strict enforcement of COVID-appropriate behaviour was emphasised upon by the L-G, Raj Niwas said.
On January 16, the number of new cases was 94 and it slowly increased to 200 on February 24 and it has been increasing since then.
“In view of the upcoming festivals, the need for more caution and regulation was stressed upon and random testing at airport and railway stations needed to be done, particularly of passengers coming from States with high incidences of COVID cases,” Mr. Baijal said.
As advised by experts, according to Raj Niwas, it was decided to continue with the existing strategy of cluster-based surveillance, testing and genome sequencing.
Mr. Baijal also stressed upon the need to ramp up vaccine coverage with greater outreach and focused public education campaigns with a special emphasis on marginalised and poor sections without access to digital platforms.
A total of 45,337 beneficiaries took the COVID-19 vaccination in the city on Monday and there were six minor Adverse Event Following Immunisation, said a government spokesperson.
A total of 67,418 tests were done in a day. Of the total cases, 6,33,975 people have recovered and there are 3,934 active cases.
The COVID-19 test positivity was 1.32% on Monday.
