City sees 1,859 new cases, tests cross 3 lakh-mark

NEW DELHI: After deciding to dramatically ramp up testing figures in the Capital, Delhi’s official testing number on Tuesday crossed the 3 lakh mark after 7,786 COVID-19 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, of which a total of 1,859 tests were positive for the contagious disease, taking the total number of cases in Delhi to 44,688.

The increased number of tests significantly brought the daily positivity rate in the Capital down to around 23.8 per cent. This daily positivity rate had reached nearly 36 per cent just days ago as testing numbers were being reduced here. Tuesday’s testing numbers showed that Delhi had conducted the most number of tests in the month of June in the last 24 hours.

The official health bulletin from the Health Department also said that 93 COVID19 deaths were added, taking the total fatalities here to 1,837; whereas 520 patients were reported to have recovered from the contagious disease, taking the total number of recoveries to 16,500, leaving around 26,351 active cases. As per the Delhi government, a total of 23,515 COVID19 patients are currently under home isolation and the total number of tests conducted stands at 3,04,483 as of Tuesday evening.

While Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Union Home Minister Amit Shah had decided in their meeting with LG Anil Baijal to ramp up testing numbers here to around 10,000 per day by June 16, Delhi is still falling short of that target. As per Shah, Delhi should be able to conduct around 15,000 tets per day by June 18 and 18,000 tests per day by June 20.

While both the Centre and the Delhi government are pouring in all possible resources to augment the number of COVID-19 beds in the Capital in anticipation of a case surge by end of June, there have been questions raised about whether Delhi has enough trained healthcare workers to tend to the patients.

While the MHA has directed the Delhi government to immediately identify and train the required number of trained healthcare workers in the coming days, the Delhi State Paramedical Technical Employees Federation has written to the CM, urging him to employ more paramedical staff here.

The body had said many of them had been working under “grave anxiety” of not having enough essentials and sought medical facilities for contractual paramedical staff as well. The federation also demanded separate OPD, indoor wards and quarantine facilities for paramedical staff, adding that many of them had already lost their lives to the virus.