Delhi reaches yet another milestone in regard to Covid-19

On Monday, Delhi reached to another level in respect to the daily count of Covid-19 cases with 448 fatalities reported within one day. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, this is the highest record reached.

Continuously for a period of three days, Delhi recorded more than 400 fatalities in a single day. Saturday registered 412 deaths and Sunday registered 407 deaths.

The total amount of fatalities has reached a number of 17,414, standing second just after Maharashtra, where 70,851 people have got affected after the outbreak of the pandemic.

Monday recorded 18,043 fresh cases, much lower than Sunday that has recorded 20,394 cases. But, this decrease in the number of cases is basically due to the decrease in the number of testing.

The data that the state health department shared in the last 24 hours shows that 61,045 people got tested in comparison to Sunday that recorded 71,997 tests.

In the second week of April, there were more than one lakh tests done among which almost 70,000 tests were through RT-PCR. The positivity rate reaches to almost 30%.

In the meantime, Delhi is seeing an increased amount of recovery rate. According to the officials, in the last 24 hours, 20,293 people has already recovered.

The one lakh active cases registered last week came down to 89,592. But there is still a scarcity in the availability of oxygen and ICU beds. The state health department’s data points out to the fact that 56% of the affected people are under home quarantine.

25,170 people are hospitalized, that accounts to 28% of the total positive cases. There are lesser number of empty beds and non-availability of ventilator beds.

Pradeep Yadav, a resident of Sadiq Nagar stated, “There are no oxygen beds available either. I couldn’t find a hospital bed for my mother and finally arranged an oxygen cylinder at home for her”. There is even a shortage in testing facilities. He further said, “Most labs refuse to do the test citing unavailability of staff for sample collection”.

Public health specialist opined that in order to reduce the number of positive cases strict lockdown needs to be imposed in the regions that have a high rate of positive cases. A doctor from Lok Nayak hospital exclaimed, “Our health infrastructure is overstretched. Doctors are facing burnout and mental trauma handling so many cases. But they are still continuing to work to save as many lives as possible”.