New Delhi: On Saturday, the national capital added 414 Covid-19 cases, the lowest daily spike in over 80 days, as Delhi remained to recover from the fourth wave of infections between April and May, a downturn that has helped the state government to further relax the lockdown from Monday onwards. Delhi’s total caseload has also decreased to levels the city last saw towards the end of March. As of Saturday, 6,731 people in the city are still hitting the infection, around half of the active cases count a week ago, when the city had 13,035 active Covid-19 infections.
On April 28, at the peak of the fourth wave of infections, Delhi had 99,752 active cases. Saturday’s case count, the lowest since March 15, came after the state conducted over 77,694 tests. As a result, the test positivity rate continued to wind down and fell to 0.53% on Saturday, the lowest in 88 days.
The seven-day average of daily infections, known as case trajectory, continued to fall, ending at an average of 602 cases per day on Saturday. The test positivity rate has now been below 1% for six days, and less than 5% for 16 days now. After the third wave of Covid-19 infections began to pour out in December, the test positivity rate stayed below 1% for 82 days and began to inch up once the fourth wave began to increase its footprint in mid-March. As a rule of thumb, tracking a region’s positivity rate serves as a good barometer for whether cases are going to increase or decrease in the coming days.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if the positivity rate from a region that has a comprehensive testing program should be at or below 5% for at least two weeks before, it can be considered that the outbreak is under control.
The health bulletin issued by the state government on Saturday showed, 60 more people died of the infection, up from 50 fatalities recorded on Friday.
Dr. Jacob John, former head of the department of virology at Christian Medical College (Vellore), said he was doubtful if there will be a third wave. “The Delta variant certainly cannot cause another surge. However, it is very good that the government is preparing for it. What we need to do is increase permanent structures and bed strength rather than the makeshift ones because if there isn’t a third wave, all will be forgotten,” he said.
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