Delhi breaks COVID plateau, records biggest 1-day spike in 2 months

The national capital has reported the highest one-day surge of fresh coronavirus cases in a span of two months. Delhi recorded 2,509 positive cases due to COVID-19, pushing the tally to 1,79,569 while the death toll has risen to 4,481 .

The recovery rate stood at 88.5 per cent after 1,050 patients were discharged from COVID facilities on Tuesday.

The last biggest one-day spike was seen on July 4 when 2,505 cases were reported. Since then, the cases had been declining and had hit a plateau ranging between 900 to 1,100 daily. In fact, the daily infections of COVID-19 were limited to under 1,000 for a while. However, it has started recording more than 1,700 cases in the past seven days. On three occasions, the cases crossed the 2,000-mark as well, including on Tuesday.

The resurgence in the cases is occurring at a time when the city is again facing the crisis of availability of ICU beds. Many private hospitals having ICU with ventilator ward facilities have already run out of beds.

Doctors said that restarting economic activities and the public's disregard for safety protocols are adding to the daily infections.

"As we are heading towards a second wave of Covid-19, things are bound to get worse from here. The economic activities have restarted, the Metro is planned to run in the coming days, and people are back to carelessness in following safety measures. In this situation, we may face the ICU beds crisis again," said Pankaj Solanki, who runs Dharamveer Solanki Hospital, a dedicated Covid facility in Rohini.

The crisis could spell doom as Unlock 4.0 is already afoot, with more people out on the streets and many disregarding the use of masks and social distancing.

The latest round of serological tests conducted in August revealed that around 28.3 per cent of Delhi's population has now been exposed to Covid-19. The figure was nearly 5 percentage points above the exposure detected in the previous serological survey conducted between June end and early July where seroprevalence found the exposure on 23.48 per cent of the total respondents.

Meanwhile, the Delhi government has started the monthly seroprevalence survey on Tuesday, whose result is expected to arrive by mid-September.