Delhi reports 27,561 Covid-19 cases, 40 deaths; positivity rate rises to 26.22%

So far, 25,240 people have died of the infection in Delhi since the pandemic began.

The deaths, however, are fewer than those recorded during the second wave in April-May last year. As many as 323 deaths were reported each day at the time when the number of cases was over 20,000 during the second wave.

City doctors have also stated that over 90 per cent of the cases, and as many deaths, were reported in patients seeking treatment for other conditions like cancer and kidney disease, who incidentally tested positive for Covid-19 when tested.

The positivity rate – proportion of the total samples that return positive – increased to 26.22 per cent on Wednesday, which means that more than one in four persons who get tested for the infection have it. The positivity rate increased from less than 1 per cent to over 26 per cent in just 15 days during the Omicron-driven wave. It took 29 days for a similar increase during the delta-driven wave, the data shows.

A total of 1,05,102 tests were conducted to detect Covid-19 in the city, of which 81 per cent were conducted using the more accurate molecular methods like the RT-PCR, CBNAAT, or TrueNat. The 85,349 molecular diagnostic tests conducted on Tuesday, as reported a day later in Wednesday’s bulletin, is the highest number of such tests ever conducted in the city. The Indian Express previously reported that the increase in the number of private labs and capacity at government labs helped the government scale up testing.

Of the 87,445 persons currently with the infection, as per the bulletin, 2,363 are in hospitals. There are 91 patients on ventilator support and 648 on oxygen support.