Delhi cases near 10,000 mark, 19 more deaths take Covid toll to 148
nNEW DELHI: The Capital recorded 422 new cases of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Sunday, taking the city’s tally to 9,755, according to the daily health bulletin released by the Delhi government. With almost 400 cases being recorded in the national capital each day for the past four days, the total number of infections is likely to cross the 10,000 mark on Monday.
Nineteen more deaths were recorded in Delhi, taking the city’s toll of Covid-19 fatalities to 148. All these deaths did not, however, take place in the past 24 hours and were cleared from a backlog of probable cases by the death audit committee.
This is the second-highest number of deaths that have been recorded in a day since 20 deaths were recorded on May 13.
“These deaths did not happen in the last 24 hours; the nineteen deaths for which summaries have come in have been recorded. It is difficult to get the reports the same day. It takes a couple of days to get the report. The backlog has almost been cleared, there will be additions like this once or twice more,” said Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain in a media interaction on Sunday.
“Many of the cases are coming from hospital, BSF, CISF. There have been many cases from the police department. There are many cases of health care workers also. Many patients admitted to the hospitals have also tested positive. Right now, most of the cases are coming from the existing containment zones, we will increase the containment zones as and when needed,” said Jain.
This puts Delhi’s mortality rate at 1.5%, still among the lowest in the country.
All designated Covid-19 hospitals – government and private — have now been directed to submit their death reports each day by 5pm to prevent any backlog and erroneous reporting. The threemember death audit committee goes through case sheets, patient records and investigations, and death summary to include the deaths in the toll every day at 5.30pm. The step was taken after a discrepancy was detected in the number of cases recorded in the health bulletin and those reported by hospitals.
Only the deaths where the “primary cause” is Covid-19 will be recorded in the bulletin.
“A person may have tested positive for the infection, but if their chest X-ray is clean, the arterial blood gas does not show any signs of acidosis, and their oxygen saturation is normal then clearly Covid-19 isn’t the cause of death,” said a senior official from Delhi’s health department, on condition of anonymity.
The 9,755 cases have been recorded in less than three months since the first case was reported in the city on March 2. The first person to be infected by the disease in the city was a 45-year-old resident of Mayur Vihar who returned from Italy.
So far, 95,656 cases have been recorded in the country, with Delhi accounting for 10% of the cases. The highest number of cases have been recorded in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, followed by Delhi.
The first spike in cases of the highly infectious disease was reported in the city in early April after people who attended a congregation in the headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic missionary group, in Nizamuddin Basti started testing positive for the infection. As per Delhi government data, 1,080 of the over 2,300 people who were evacuated from the building tested positive for Covid-19.
The highest number of cases recorded during this first spike was on April 13 when 356 cases had been recorded in a single day. Of these, 325 were in those evacuated from Nizamuddin, the data showed.
The number of cases started shooting up this month, with Delhi breaching the highest single-day spike in numbers four times in May — 427 cases were recorded on May 3, 428 on May 6, 448 on May 7, and 472 cases were recorded on Thursday, May 14. From just over 3,500 Covid-19 cases recorded till April-end, the numbers have shot up by over 6,000 cases being recorded in the city in just 15 days.
Some of this is owing to laboratories across the city rushing to give Covid-19 reports with 24 hours of collecting the samples in compliance with orders by the Delhi government and the high court. Since mid-january when screening for Covid-19 began in the country, Delhi has tested 135,791 samples. There are 13 government and 15 private laboratories in the city performing the tests.
Many district authorities also pointed out that hospitals were becoming hot spots for infections with several health care workers, their family members, and patients visiting hospitals also testing positive for the disease. So far, over 500 health care workers across the city have tested positive for Covid-19.