Delhi: COVID-19 positivity rate drops to 6.89 pc; health minister says situation better now

COVID-19 positivity rate in the national capital currently stands at 6.89 per cent, informed Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday, adding that the pandemic situation is better now.

Addressing a press conference, he said that the positivity rate declined due to lockdown.

However, he declined to comment about when the lockdown will be lifted and said that the citizens can't be at ease time until the positivity rate reaches 5 percent.

"We have a positivity rate at 6.89 per cent. Delhi was reporting around 28,000 new COVID-19 cases before lockdown, now around 4,000 cases are being reported. The situation is better now," he said.

The national capital has been under a lockdown since April 19 in view of a surge in COVID-19 cases.

The Health Minister also informed that the stock of Covaxin is over in Delhi for the 18-44 age group and Covishield vaccines for the age group are left for another two days.

Aske on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's comment that a strain has arrived from Singapore Jain said, "Rather than discussing where the strain came from it is more important to know that India now has many numbers of strains."

He further said that out of the total 27,000 hospital beds in Delhi 13,000 beds lie vacant. Out of 4500 ICU beds, 1,200 beds remain to be used, he said.

The Health Minister said that the government has demanded one lakh doses of medicines for black fungus infection treatment from the Centre.

"South West Delhi has the most number of cases, so we are doing the majority of our COVID-19 tests there, but for the last four days the cases are decreasing there," he added.

Delhi continued to see a drop in COVID-19 cases with the city seeing 4,482 new cases in the last 24 hours, the Delhi government's health bulletin informed on Tuesday.

The recovery rate has improved to 94.79 per cent, which is the highest since April 8. The fatality rate stands at 1.5 per cent.

( With inputs from ANI )