New Delhi: As Health Minister Satyendar Jain insisted that the third wave of the pandemic in Delhi had peaked, the city reported its highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases yet again on Sunday, with the Delhi government reporting 7,745 new cases emerging out of a little over 50,000 tests — leaving a staggering daily positivity rate of 15.26 per cent.
Significantly, since the third wave began, sometime around the second week of October, Delhi has seen a 94 per cent increase in home isolation cases and an 88 per cent increase in active COVID-19 cases, not to mention the sharp spike in daily cases. In fact, since then the daily positivity rate has also jumped.
On Sunday, Delhi added 77 deaths to its toll from the virus - another record high, taking fatalities here to 6,989. Interestingly, while testing has on average been the same since the third wave began, the number of RT-PCR tests are being pushed to their limits. On Sunday over 15,000 of the tests were RT-PCR tests.
Coming to the rise in home isolation cases and active cases, Delhi had a total of 12,691 home isolation cases on October 7. As of Sunday, this stood at 24,723 - a 94.8 per cent increase in a month. On October 7, the number active cases were 22,186, which now are over 41,800 showing an increase of 88.66 per cent.
While Delhi had reported some 2,800 new cases from around 51,000 tests on October 7, yielding a positivity rate of 5.57 per cent, the positivity rate jumped by nearly 10 percentage points in a month to 15.26 per cent on Sunday. Even when the third wave is observed to have begun on October 13, the daily positivity rate stood at 5.52 per cent.
Amid this situation, the city has reported over 3.89 lakh recoveries, with 6,069 of them reported on Sunday. Unfortunately, the third wave has also seen a new peak in terms of daily deaths added. On Saturday, 79 deaths were reported and on Sunday 77. When the third wave began, the city was consistently reporting daily deaths between 35-40.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority has issued orders mandating that public buses here continue operating at maximum seating capacity till the end of November and East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir has tested negative for the virus after he isolated himself following a case at his house.