City records highest spike with 3,137 cases; toll crosses 2K-mark

New Delhi: Delhi on Thursday reported its highest single-day increase in new COVID-19 cases for the third consecutive day as officials here said 3,137 new cases were detected in the last 24 hours, taking the tally in the Capital to 53,116. This is the first time the Capital has clocked a daily increase of more than 3,000 cases, taking the total cases in the city beyond the 50,000-mark.

The daily recoveries saw dip compared to the previous day, with just 1,828 COVID-19 patients reported to have recovered from the disease in one day, taking the total recoveries here to 23,569.

Significantly, testing numbers in Delhi saw a dramatic increase on Friday, with authorities having conducted 13,074 tests in the last 24 hours. This is the highest number of daily tests in the month of June and likely to be one of the highest daily number of tests conducted here since the outbreak. A total of 3,34,376 tests ave been conducted in the city so far.

The official health bulletin showed that 66 new deaths were added to the toll, taking the total number of fatalities in Delhi past the 2,000-mark to 2,035, leaving a total of 27,512 active patients.

Moreover, more than 7,000 rapid antigen tests were performed in Delhi on Friday after the programme was started the previous day. Of these, around 450 had tested positive, according to officials. Meanwhile, the Delhi government has also notified capped RT-PCR testing rates of Rs 2,400 with immediate effect. "ICMR expects availability of over 71 lakh Rapid Antigen test kits in next 10 days kickstarting production in a big way," the Indian Council of Medical Research said on Friday, adding that this strategy would ensure robust control of Covid-19 in high burden states. A total of over 14,000 rapid antigen tests have been performed in Delhi in 2 days.