All experts believe Delhi has hit peak of second wave: Kejriwal

New Delhi: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said the experts have indicated that Delhi had reached the peak of the second wave of COVID-19 cases, hinting that the count is expected to start declining again in the coming days.

He said the government was "keeping its fingers crossed" and hoped that the COVID-19 cases will "gradually" come down due to the steps taken by his government. Delhi has been witnessing a surge in the number of Coronavirus cases in the last few days. "All the experts believe that the second wave (of Coronavirus), which had come in Delhi, appears to have hit its peak. Now, the cases will come down in the coming days," Kejriwal told reporters, adding that the pandemic was largely under control between July 1 and August 17.

"From August 17, the cases rose slightly from around 1,100 to 1,500 and as a responsible government, we did not take any risk and immediately scaled up testing from around 20,000 to 60,000 tests per day," the Chief Minister said.

"The Coronavirus cases have increased in Delhi because testing was massively scaled up. The daily cases were around 4,500 on September 16 which have now started coming down and currently, there are around 3,700 cases (daily)," he said.

According to Kejriwal, if the testing would have scaled down to the previous level of 20,000 tests (daily), the cases would also have come down to around 1,500 per day in the city.

Kejriwal hoped that the government steps, including increasing containment zones from 550 in mid-August to around 2,000 now, will gradually bring down the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the coming days. On Thursday, Delhi reported 3,834 fresh COVID-19 cases as the infection tally in the city mounted to over 2.60 lakh, while the death toll rose to 5,123.

Meanwhile, nearly 74 per cent of the new COVID-19 recoveries are from 10 states and UT, including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, UP, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Delhi, Kerala, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, the Union Health ministry said on Thursday.

Daily new recoveries in India have surpassed the new cases of Coronavirus infection for the last six days and the country's total COVID-19 recoveries have surged to 46.7 lakh exceeding active cases by more than 37 lakh. A total of 87,374 people have recuperated in a span of 24 hours in the country, while the number of new confirmed cases reported is 86,508, according to the data updated at 8 am.

India's COVID-19 caseload breached the 57-lakh mark on Thursday, while the national recovery rate logged 81.55 per cent, according to the ministry data.

The total cases mounted to 57,32,518 with the death toll climbing to 91,149 while 1,129 people succumbed to the disease in a span of 24 hours.