On Saturday, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that while the national positivity rate has gone up in the last 10 days, the positivity rate in the capital has come down. “There was a time when the positivity rate in Delhi was 30% or more but now it has come down to 5%,” he said. Delhi reported 1,142 new cases and 29 deaths due to Covid on Saturday, taking the total number of cases and fatalities to 1,29,531 and 3,806 respectively. At present, the city has 12,657 active cases, while the number of people who have recovered from the illness has reached 1,13,068. The recovery rate in the capital is 87.3%. In a status report filed before the Delhi High Court, the state health department said that between June 18 and July 24, the city conducted 4,04,141 rapid antigen tests, out of which 24,501 (6%) people tested positive. A follow-up RT-PCR was conducted on 2,818 patients, in which 404 (14.35%) tested positive. Recently, while addressing concerns about the accuracy of the rapid antigen test, Health Ministry officials had also confirmed that almost 15% of the people who had undergone rapid antigen tests and were found to be symptomatic even after testing negative, had turned out to be positive in a follow-up RT-PCR test. The RT-PCR test is considered to be the gold standard for testing while the rapid antigen test provides results within 30 minutes. If a person tests positive in a rapid antigen test, then no second test is required. But if a person tests negative, then an RT-PCR test is performed to check the presence of the virus. On the capital’s Covid-19 situation, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tweeted: “Delhi has reached 8th position in terms of number of active cases. Situation was bad till a few days back. We were at 2nd position. However, there is no room for complacency. Take precautions and stay safe.” As per the state health bulletin on Saturday the city conducted 5,690 RT-PCR/CB NAAT/TrueNat tests and 14,819 rapid antigen tests in the last 24 hours. At present, Delhi is testing 48,907 per million population and the total number of tests have touched 9,29,244. Of the total 15,301 beds earmarked for Covid-19 patients, 12,444 beds are lying vacant. A total of 7,339 patients are availing treatment under home isolation and over 1,000 patients are admitted to the Covid healthcare centres. Speaking to the reporters on Saturday, Jain also said that only 20% of the beds in the city hospitals are occupied at the moment.
