The number of new cases in Delhi has risen dramatically in the past few days despite the city witnessing a dip in the previous months
Delhi reported an uptick in COVID-19 cases, compelling the health department to hold an emergency meeting on March 30, 2023.
The national capital logged 300 new cases for the first time on Wednesday since August 31 2022, with the positivity rate rising to 13.89 per cent, according to the health department.
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In light of the rapid surge, Delhi health minister Saurabh Bhardwaj will meet officers and health experts this afternoon.
The meeting will be attended by the special secretary of health, the director general of health services, the nodal officer for oxygen and testing, and the medical directors of several institutions.
The number of new cases in Delhi has risen dramatically in the past few days despite the city witnessing a dip in the previous months. The number had even flattened to zero on January 16, for the first time since the pandemic broke out.
The additional 300 cases pushed Delhi’s total number of cases and death count to 2,009,361 and 26,526, respectively. While 54 of the 7,986 beds in the dedicated COVID-19 facilities here are occupied, 452 patients are in home quarantine, according to the health department.
Experts suspect low testing to be the reason for an increased positivity rate. But they maintained that the recent spike demands more attention.
“When testing is low, it means only those with severe symptoms are coming forward to get tested. This skews the results towards a higher positivity rate. Nonetheless, the number of cases is surely increasing and precautions like wearing masks should be restarted,” a health department official told The Indian Express.
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Some hospitals in the national capital have conducted mock drills to fight the situation. A two-hour long mock drill was conducted at the Lok Nayak Hospital, which treated most COVID-19 cases in the city during the peak of the infection.
“We assessed the response time. When a patient is brought to the hospital, how long does it take for us to shift him to a room. For critical patients who need to be shifted to the ICU, we have a red corridor. We checked whether all ventilators and oxygen points were functioning. We have around 450 beds for Covid patients,” Dr Suresh Kumar, the medical director of Lok Nayak Hospital, is quoted as saying to The Indian Express.
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Experts suspect low testing to be the reason for an increased positivity rate. Representational photo: iStock..png)
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