Lowest daily tally in over 7 months, Health Min says govt 'over-cautious'
New Delhi: Even as Delhi recorded its lowest daily COVID-19 cases in over seven months and the government here is de-escalating Coronavirus beds, Health Minister Satyendar Jain assured residents that as far as shutting down Covid Centres is concerned, the Delhi government is treading very cautiously and will not take any hasty decisions.
The Capital recorded 424 fresh COVID-19 cases and 14 more fatalities due to the disease on Sunday, even as the positivity rate slipped to 0.62 per cent, authorities here said.
Jain added that even after de-escalation of covid beds, there will still be 10,500-11,000 available for Coronavirus patients.
"We had reduced some 2,500 beds in Delhi government hospitals and 5,000-6,000 beds in private hospitals. The occupancy currently is less than 2,000. Earlier we had 18,800 beds available. We shall be repeating the exercise of de-escalation next week," the Minister added.
The COVID-19 case tally in the city stands at over 6.26 lakh and the death toll due to the disease has climbed to 10,585, officials said.
Delhi recorded 494 cases on Saturday while the positivity rate was 0.73 per cent.
The 424 fresh COVID-19 cases on Sunday came out of the 68,759 tests conducted on Saturday, including 39,217 RT-PCR tests and 29,542 rapid antigen tests, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department.
The tally of active cases dropped to 5,044 on Sunday from 5,342 the previous day.
"We are very closely reviewing the situation, but we are treading very cautiously. We are over-cautious. When the new strain was discovered, it was a great move by CM Arvind Kejriwal to ban all the flights. Therefore it is better to remain on the safer side," Jain
said.
He said for the first time, positive cases were less than 500, and the positivity rate was on a continuous decline.
"For the first time in the last 7 and a half months, the number of cases has gone below 500. After 17 May 2020, this is the lowest number of cases. Positivity rate has fallen to 0.73% implying that in every 1000 tests conducted, 7 positive cases are detected," he said.
