New Delhi: The number of containment zones in the national Capital jumped to 633 on Friday, recording an increase of 175 over the last two days, according to the Delhi government's official health bulletin. This comes after rigorous exercises on the ground with officials mapping cases by geographical locations and redrawing containment zone boundaries.
Chief Secretary Vijay Dev on Friday directed district magistrates and DCPs to ensure strict implementation of all parameters in the COVID-19 containment zones, sources said. The chief secretary also asked the DMs to keep up their efforts to arrest the spread of coronavirus as steps being taken by authorities are yielding good results.
On Thursday, the city had 563 containment zones and 458 zones a day prior to that. The number shot up after the city government decided to break existing hotspots into smaller clusters for better surveillance.
With 2,089 new coronavirus cases and 42 deaths in the last 24 hours, the national Capital recorded a total tally of 1,09,140 and 3,300 deaths as on Friday. However, 84,694 patients of these have recovered from the contagious disease and only 4,613 of them are recuperating in hospitals, with an active case count of 21,146.
The Delhi government said that 12,272 patients are recovering in home isolation. The official health bulletin showed that 22,961 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, of which 10,129 were RT-PCR tests and 12,832 were rapid antigen tests.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday spoke to plasma donors and thanked them for their contribution to saving the lives of Coronavirus patients.
The Chief Minister praised them for donating plasma and appealed to them to motivate more recovered patients to come forward and donate.
"When I hear stories of plasma donors, I feel very proud of my fellow Delhiites. So, I decided to call and congratulate some donors," he tweeted, sharing the audio of his conversation with the donors. The Delhi government has set up India's first plasma bank at the ILBS Hospital, with an objective to maintain a plasma stock from those who have already recovered from the disease.
In the audio clip, Corona recovered patient Srishti said she felt symptoms for five days but has fully recovered now.
Kejriwal praised her for donating plasma and said he was proud of her. Srishti thanked him for motivating people to donate plasma and also
lauded the infrastructure and facilities of the plasma bank at the ILBS hospital.