‘Will review restrictions after 3-4 days’

Positivity rate not low enough, government monitoring situation: Jain

January 20, 2022 01:34 am | Updated 01:34 am IST - New Delhi

A crowded market in Dwarka despite COVID-19 restrictions in force on Wednesday.

A crowded market in Dwarka despite COVID-19 restrictions in force on Wednesday.

The Delhi government will monitor the COVID-19 situation for three to four days before reviewing the current pandemic-related restrictions, Health Minister Satyendar Jain said on Wednesday.

“The positivity rate at present is 22.5%. It’s not low enough to lift the curbs. We will see what happens in the next three to four days. It had gone up to 30%. Let it reduce to half,” the Minister said when asked about easing restrictions. For the past one week, the daily hospital admissions are not increasing, he added.

Dip in testing

“In Delhi, it seems that cases have peaked and are going down now. We hope that the number of cases will fall at the same pace it peaked. We will wait for three to four days to see how it falls,” the Minister added.

When asked about the dip in tests, he said that the Central government has changed the guidelines for testing and added that the Delhi government is not denying tests to anyone.

The test positivity rate of COVID-19 cases in the city increased slightly to 23.86% on Wednesday from 22.47% a day earlier, according to a Delhi government bulletin.

The TPR had peaked on Friday — 30.64% — and remained at that level on Saturday and has been less than that since.

On Wednesday, the number of new COVID-19 cases in 24 hours also rose to 13,785 from 11,684 on Tuesday. A total of 57,776 tests were done over 24 hours.

Thirty-five new deaths were reported, taking the toll to 25,460, as per the bulletin. Of the total 15,603 hospital beds for COVID-19, 82.48% were vacant on Wednesday.

On Thursday, 28,867 fresh cases were reported in the city, the highest since the beginning of the pandemic.

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