Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday said that the third wave of coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic in the national capital was not over yet, but was “definitely on the wane”.
“Cases are falling, and death count in a day is lowest in the last 40 days. The situation has improved, and we can definitely say the third wave of the pandemic here is on the wane. It is not over, but on the wane,” he said.
Asked about non-Covid-19 patients needing ICU beds, he said as many as over 13,000 beds were available for Covid-19 patients in Delhi, which is “not there in any city of the country”.
“We will review the situation. But ICU beds can’t be managed overnight, if cases suddenly increase, so we had to see the trend stabilise first”, he said.
“There are 18,800 Covid-19 beds in Delhi of which over 13,000 are vacant. There is no other city in the country that has so many vacant beds. Covid numbers fluctuate, so it is important that trend gets stabilized,” he added.
As the positivity rate went down to 3.42% on Wednesday, Jain had tweeted that it was heartening to see that the national capital is “emerging victorious” in the battle against the coronavirus. On Thursday, the positivity rate further went down to 2.46%.
The tally of active cases dropped to 18,753 from 20,546 the previous day and the total number of cases climbed to 6,01,150. The recovery rate stood at over 95%, according to the latest bulletin issued by the Delhi health department.
Delhi recorded 1,575 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday, the lowest in over three months. These relatively low number of new cases on Thursday came out of 64,069 tests conducted the previous day, the bulletin added.
