Fewest new infections in a day since April 15, positivity rate falls to 23.3%

NEW DELHI: The Capital added 17,364 new Covid-19 infections on Saturday, the fewest since April 15, when the city logged 16,699 cases. Further, in what may be seen as a hopeful sign, Delhi’s test positivity rate continued its slow, but steady, decline, dipping to 23.3% on Saturday, with over 74,000 samples collected in the previous 24 hours.

The positivity rate, which is an indicator of the spread of the infection, shot up to 36% on April 22, during the peak of the current surge of the infections.

The World Health Organization recommends a positivity rate below 5% for two weeks for an infection to be considered under control in a region.

The city also reported 332 deaths due to the infection on Saturday’s bulletin, taking the toll to 19,071. The infection has claimed over 300 lives every day for 17 days now, with the toll crossing 400 on three days.

The seven-day average case fatality ratio (CFR) – proportion of positive people who die of the infection – has also started inching upwards, standing at 1.82% as on Saturday. The cumulative CFR – calculated on the basis of total cases and deaths reported in the city since the pandemic began – stood at 1.46%.

With fewer cases and more recoveries, the number of active cases in the city dipped below 90,000 for the second time in a fortnight, and was the lowest on Saturday in this period.

On Saturday evening, 99.2% of the 5,661 ICU beds in the city were occupied, while 92.6% oxygen beds were taken, the state government’s health dashboard showed. The Delhi government plans to set up 1,200 makeshift ICU beds for Covid-19 patients, as part of its plans to tackle the fourth wave of infections.

Meanwhile, state health minister Satyendar Jain inspected the bed expansion work at GTB Hospital. “Inspected the extension of the GTB 500-bedded ICU hospital. Work at this hospital is almost complete. Remaining final touches will be completed in a day or two,” tweeted Jain.

Health experts said Delhi’s infection numbers must be treated cautiously.

“This is a good sign, but we have to approach it with cautious optimism. Some of the mathematical models have shown that Delhi is likely to reach the peak of infections earlier than the whole country because the number of cases in Delhi were very high and the numbers started going up before they did for the country. So, that is what might be happening. We need to see a downward trend for at least a few days before we say anything. Also, the decline has to be accompanied by persistent high testing,” said Dr Lalit Kant, former head of the department of epidemiology at ICMR.