Authorities said that the city has reported 2,889 fresh cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 83,077, while 3,306 people have recovered from the dreaded virus during the same period.
New Delhi: The number of COVID-19 containment zones in Delhi has risen to 421 after re-mapping of such areas, an increase of 141 in the last two days, as the cases mounted to over 83,000 on Sunday.
Noting that the number of recoveries was more than the number of new cases, Delhi government said that the situation will improve in coming weeks and it will not be as "bleak" as it appeared in early June when there was a rapid surge in infections.
Around 2.45 lakh people have been screened till Saturday night in an ongoing mammoth exercise to check the spread of COVID-19 in the national capital under a revised strategy, officials said.
Authorities said that the city has reported 2,889 fresh cases in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 83,077, while 3,306 people have recovered from the dreaded virus during the same period.
The death toll from the novel coronavirus has risen to 2,623 with 65 fatalities reported in the last 24 hours.
Recently, Delhi has surpassed Mumbai as the worst-hit city in the country.
Also read: COVID-19 infection claims lives of senior doctor and ward boy in Delhi
Several hundreds of healthcare workers have been infected by COVID-19 till date in Delhi.
According to officials, the count of containment zones in the city is expected to jump further as the authorities in some districts were yet to complete the task of redrawing such areas following the Centre's directions.
Before the re-mapping exercise, the number of containment zones was 280 on June 25 in the city, an official said, adding that the number has jumped to 421. The re-mapping exercise started on June 26.
The official said that southwest Delhi district has reported a rise of 37 zones since the re-mapping exercise has started, taking the total number of such areas to 80.
The North Delhi district has 59 containment zones, followed by south district (56), central district (40), Shahdara district (38), East district (33) Southeast (32), northwest (28), West (25), New Delhi (21) and Northeast (9).
Talking about screening of people in the city, an official said, "Till Saturday night, we have screened around two lakh people for COVID-19 in house-to-house survey being conducted across the city. Also, 45,000 people have been screened in COVID-19 containment zones.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia issued a statement, saying that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal sought help and support of every agency to battle the coronavirus in Delhi.
In the first week of June, there was a sudden spike in corona cases, Sisodia said, adding that there was a shortage of beds and testing.
"The chief minister believes that battle against coronavirus is very big and no individual person or agency can deal with it alone. In this spirit, CM has brought everyone together and his efforts seem to be paying off," Sisodia said in the statement.
He said that last week saw things stabilising as recovery rate has increased to 62%, adding, "Today more patients are recovering in Delhi than those who are falling ill, number of deaths are coming down, positivity rate is decreasing rapidly."
"We are hopeful that situation will improve in the coming weeks and will certainly not be as bleak as it looked in first week of June when domain experts predicted 5.5 lakh cases in Delhi by July 31," the deputy chief minister added.