Capital reports 2,463 fresh cases, adds 50 deaths to toll

New Delhi: Delhi reported 2,463 fresh COVID-19 cases on Wednesday with over 72,000 tests being conducted in the last 24 hours, even as the positivity rate dropped to 3.42 per cent, authorities said.

The positivity rate on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday had dipped to 4.96 per cent, 4.78 per cent, 4.2 per cent, 3.68 per cent and 3.15 per cent respectively. However, on Tuesday it had risen again to 4.23 per cent.

These fresh cases came out of 72,079 tests conducted the previous day, including 32,976 RT-PCR tests, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department. The rest of the tests came from rapid antigen tests.

Fifty fatalities were added here on Wednesday, pushing the toll in the national capital to 9,813, the bulletin said.

The active cases tally on Wednesday dropped to 20,546 from 22,310, the previous day.

The bulletin said that the total number of cases has climbed to 5,99,575.

Meanwhile, Health Minister Satyendar Jain tweeted a prepared data poster of available beds in the city for COVID-19 patients and said, "It is heartening to see that Delhi is emerging victorious in the battle against the virus." The data on the poster he had shared showed that the number of COVID-19 beds in Delhi had risen from 15,904 to 18,807 between November 7 and December 8.

In the same time period, the health minister said occupied COVID-19 beds had come down to 5,598 from 7,858 and the number of vacant COVID-19 beds had increased to 13,209 from 8,046.

His tweet said, "First time, Delhi has witnessed more than 13000 vacant Covid beds in hospitals. Now the effect of the pandemic is on the decline."

In a series of tweets, he also said that for the first time in Delhi, more than 2,500 ICU beds are vacant for COVID-19 patients. "Less than 5000 cases for the last 12 days. Today's death numbers are lowest since 1 Nov. Continue to observe all precautions," Jain

tweeted.