New single-day Covid peak: Has Delhi given up?

NEW DELHI: The surge in Covid-19 cases in Delhi continued on Thursday with another single-day peak being recorded at 5,739 cases, a day after 5,673 cases had been reported.
The cases have been rising consistently for the past seven days except on Monday due to lesser number of tests being conducted during the weekend. Twenty-seven patients were reported to have died on Thursday, taking the total number to 6,423.This was the third successive day that the city posted its highest number of new cases.

‘Third wave? Too early to say’
Karol Bagh
Among 60,124 people tested for coronavirus, 9.5% were found to be positive, leading to active cases breaching the 30,000-mark. The city currently has 30,952 active cases compared to 29,378 a day before.
Health minister Satyendar Jain attributed the huge spike to the Delhi government changing its Covid-19 management strategy and going for aggressive contact tracing and testing. Jain said the government was prepared to handle the spike.
Khari Baoli
Over 15 contacts are being traced and tested on an average for each positive individual in order to check the spread of the coronavirus. Some of them are also being tested twice after a gap of four to five days so that no positive case escapes detection.
Gandhi Nagar
Jain said this could be the “third Covid-19 wave” but added that it would be too early to conclude that. He said the trend should be observed for a week. He expressed confidence that the revised Covid-19 management strategy would be successful though initially there has been a spike in cases.
The minister said that despite the spike, the death rate is 0.99% and overall case fatality rate 1.73%, which was more than 3% in the past.
Lajpat Nagar
The positivity rate, which was 9.3% a day before, climbed to 9.5%. The city, however, reported 27 deaths, 13 less than Wednesday, and saw 4,138 people recover in the past 24 hours, slightly higher than the previous day.
Delhi has till now reported 3.7 lakh positive cases, out of which 3.3 lakh people have recovered and 6,423 people have died, according to the daily Covid-19 update released by the health department. Among the active Covid cases, 18,069 people are currently in home isolation, the number increasing by nearly 1,200 in a day. The number of active containment zones has, meanwhile, reached 3,113, highest so far.
Sarojini Nagar
The expert committee formed by the Centre and headed by Dr V K Paul had early this month expressed apprehensions that the festival-related gatherings and winter months, combined with pollution which makes respiratory illnesses severe, could lead to rise in Covid-19 cases.
The good news is that the city has a huge number of beds vacant in Covid hospitals. A marginal increase in occupancy was reported on Thursday. Compared to 5,665 occupied beds in Covid hospitals of the city a day before, 5,854 beds were occupied on Thursday. Delhi has 15,749 beds in government and private Covid hospitals, out of which 9,895 were vacant. Additionally, nearly 6,500 beds are vacant at Covid care centres.
The share of RT-PCR tests in the total tests continued to remain high on Thursday with the city conducting 17,029 RT-PCR tests, a little less than Wednesday. Compared to 43,287 rapid antigen tests on Wednesday, 43,095 tests were conducted on Thursday.