Written By: Longjam Dineshwori | Updated : May 5, 2022 8:16 AM IST
The national capital is seeing a rise in Covid cases again. On Tuesday, the city recorded 1,414 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours, against 1,076 on the previous day, as per the Health Department bulletin.
During the same time, one death related to COVID-19 was reported in the city.
The city had reported 1,485 Covid infections on Sunday and 1,520 cases the day before. But no Covid related deaths were recorded in the last three days.
Adding the new cases, the number of active cases in Delhi has gone up to 5,986, including 4,389 patients who are being treated in home isolation. The city's Covid positivity rate now stands at 5.97 per cent.
In the last 24 hours, as many as 1,171 patients also recovered from the disease and a total of 23,694 new were conducted. Currently, there are 1,211 Covid containment zones in the city.
"The rise in COVID cases that we have seen in last few days in Delhi NCR is not something which is very unusual. This is something which is kind of natural history of this virus. The peak and drop keeps on coming and going," said Dr. Ravi Shekhar Jha, Additional Director, Pulmonology, Fortis Escorts, Faridabad.
However, he suggested that the major reason why the cases have started rising rapidly in the city is that many people have completely stopped following COVID appropriate behavior.
"Science has clearly shown that the only way to stop the virus transmission is following COVID appropriate behavior and proper vaccination. Although majority of Indians are vaccinated, many of us are not following COVID appropriate behavior. We must keep this thing in our mind that vaccination can prevent us from having a severe infection, but infection cannot be prevented from vaccine. So, if someone is vaccinated, he can get infection, the only thing is that his infection may not get that severe if he wasn't vaccinated. Therefore, if we have to stop the virus, we must immediately start following COVID appropriate behavior that we have learnt in past two years," he said.
The good things about this strain is that it is not as contagious at its earlier variants were and mortality rate is very low, Dr. Jha stated.
"I have specifically noticed that in earlier delta plus and omicron variants, we were seeing that if one member of a family was infected, everyone used to get the infection, but in this variant, only one or two members of a family are getting infected. This simply means that it is not as contagious at its earlier variants were. Another good thing is that the mortality rate is very low. So, it is kind of almost comparable to other normal viral infection. Therefore, we need not be scared. But still, the virus is known to mutate very fast so we should not allow it to replicate so that there should not be any chance of mutation," he added.
However, health experts aren't so worried about the rise in COVID cases, and they believe that the number may go down soon.
Speaking to a national daily on Tuesday, Dr Jugal Kishore, head, community medicine, Safdarjung Hospital, said that new cases may increase for a week more and then come down.
He added that the incubation period of the new coronavirus variant and clinical recovery from it is very short, just 4-5 days and so a lengthy occurrence period is unlikely. According to him, if the transmission is faster, cases will also come down faster.
Further, he added hat there had been limited hospital admissions and so there is no need to panic.
Other experts also opined that Delhi will experience cycles of rise and fall in COVID cases, given that the new variants are in circulation.
