City sees 677 new cases & 21 deaths

New Delhi: Delhi recorded 677 fresh COVID-19 cases and 21 fatalities on Wednesday, even as the positivity rate dropped to 0.8 per cent, authorities said.

The infection tally in the city mounted to over 6.24 lakh and the death toll rose to 10,523 on Wednesday, they said, adding that over 84,000 tests were conducted on the previous day.

From December 21 to 23, the daily cases count has been below the 1,000-mark. On December 21, 803 cases were reported; 939 on December 22 and 871 on December 23.

However, on December 24, 1,063 cases were recorded, dropping again to 758 on December 25 and 655 on December 26. On December 27, 757 cases were recorded while on December 28, the daily cases count was 564, the lowest in the last seven months.

On May 26, Delhi had recorded 412 COVID-19 cases.

The latest 677 cases came out the 84,680 tests conducted on Tuesday, including 44,221 RT-PCR tests and 40,459 rapid antigen tests, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department.

The number of active cases dropped to 5,838 on Wednesday from 6,122 Tuesday.

The bulletin said the total number of cases has climbed to 6,24,795. The highest single-day spike till date — 8,593 cases — was reported on November 11.

According to the bulletin, out of the total number of 18,718 beds in COVID hospitals, 16,433 are vacant.

The Delhi government had significantly ramped up testing in the past few weeks, with the count on several times crossing the 80,000-mark. The number of tests done per million, as on Tuesday was over 4.5 lakh, while the total number of tests stood at over 85 lakh.

The bulletin said 6,08,434 patients have recovered, been discharged or migrated so far.