City records 536 fresh Covid cases, highest in 2.5 months

New Delhi: Delhi on Wednesday recorded 536 new coronavirus cases, the highest in about two-and-a-half months, while there more persons died from the pathogen, the Health Department said. The number of active cases rose to 2,702 from 2,488 a day ago, according to a health bulletin.

The 536 new cases took the infection tally to 6,45,025 and 6.31 lakh people have recovered so far. The positivity rate rose to 0.66 per cent. Three new fatalities took the toll to 10,948, the bulletin said.

On Tuesday, 425 cases were recorded with a positivity rate of 0.61 per cent. A total of 585 cases were reported on January 1 and 424 on January 3.

A total of 80,856 tests, including 50,216 RT-PCR and 30,640 rapid antigen, were conducted on Tuesday, while the number of people under home isolation rose to 1,438 from 1,401 a day ago, it said.

Meanwhile, centenarian Brij Prakash Gupta, who was born a year after the end of the deadly Spanish Flu, received his first shot of COVID-19 vaccine in Delhi on Wednesday, his son said.

Gupta, now 101, stepped out of his home in south Delhi "for the first time since March 20, last year" to get his Covishield jab, son Vimal Gupta said, adding his father is doing fine.

"My father was born on November 26, 1920 in Delhi. He had worked as a manager in a bank in Delhi. Since, the bank's office was located in old Delhi, and there was communal violence during the Partition time, he resigned from the bank service and started his own business after that," he said.