Delhi Sees Highest Single-Day Spike With 4473 New COVID Cases, Were The Celebrations Too Early?
Just over a month ago, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was thanking everyone and congratulating Delhiites while announcing that the COVID-19 situation in the national capital is under control.
?¡°I am happy that with the help of everyone, the COVID-19 situation in the national capital is under control now. The way Delhi has been dealing with COVID-19 situation is being discussed in the country as well as across the world,¡± Kejriwal had said, projecting a picture of optimism.
Delhi, which was once among the worst affected cities in the country had seen the number of active cases drop to less than 10,000 and the number of new infections was constantly below 1000.
Short-lived optimism
But the optimism did not last long as Delhiites started showing disregard to COVID-19 guidelines thinking that the pandemic is over.
The refusal to maintain social distancing and wearing a mask in public meant that COVID-19 cases began spiking in the national capital once again.
Continuous rise in COVID cases
And for the past few days, the city has been reporting a new record number of infections.
Delhi's COVID-19 tally has risen to more than 2.30 lakh after 4,473 fresh cases were reported on Wednesday, which was the highest single-day spike in the national capital recorded so far.
The previous highest single-day spike was 4,321 cases, which was recorded on Saturday last week.
Thirty-three fatalities pushed the deaths in the national capital to 4,839, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department. Four of these 33 deaths are from the previous days.
The COVID-19 deaths in Delhi stood at 4,806 on Tuesday.
The active cases tally on Wednesday rose to 30,914 from 29,787 on the previous day, as per the bulletin.
The Wednesday bulletin said that the number of deaths from the coronavirus infection has risen to 4,839 and the total number of cases have climbed to 2,30,269.
The number of containment zones in Delhi jumped to 1,637 on Wednesday from 1,560 on Tuesday.
CM Kejriwal however said the matter of concern should be the number of deaths and not cases as he claimed that the coronavirus death rate in the national capital is perhaps the lowest in the world.
He said that currently around 60,000 tests for detection of COVID-19 are being conducted in Delhi daily, which means that 3,000 tests are conducted per day per million population in the city.
"In Delhi,?3,057 COVID-19 tests are conducted per day per million population. In the?UK, around 3,000 tests?are conducted per million population,?1,388 in the USA,?2,311 in Russia, and 8,58 in Peru. In India, the figure is 819 tests per day per million. So, Delhi is conducting the highest number of tests in the whole world," the chief minister said.
