COVID-19: Delhi's Testing Rate Slips as Number of Cases Increase

From a high of 3,947 on June 23, Delhi’s number of new cases per day went down to a low of 613 cases reported on July 27. But the past week has changed that trend, and Sunday saw the figure climb to 1,450, from 1,412 the previous day, the highest in over 25 days.

The number of active cases too saw a welcome decline since July. From 27,007 on July 1 the number of active cases fell to 9,897 on August 4 and has remained above 10,000.

A look at the number per week also gives us a sense of the trajectory so far. From about 8,955 cases in the first week of June, the weekly numbers rose to a high of about 23,300 in the week of June 22-28.   

One graph that is heartening though is that of the number of recoveries, which on August 23 stood at 1,45,388 of the confirmed cases of 1,61,466, the total deaths so far being 4,300. The total active case are now 11,778.

The case fatality rate or CFR has shown significant improvement in the past few months. On June 1, the CFR of Delhi was 5.6 per cent. For comparison, on the same day, West Bengal’s was a whopping12.4 per cent while Chandigarh’s was 2 per cent. On August 23, Delhi reported a CFR of 2.9 per cent, West Bengal 2.5 per cent and Chandigarh 2.4 per cent.

The total number of tests on August 23 was 18,731. That is, about 70,431 tests per million. The total number of tests in the past week were 1,28,974, and the number of cases in the week stood at 8,886. But if one looked at the testing figures over the weeks, from a high of about 1,46,349 tests in the week of July 6-12, it fell to 1,10,038 in the week of August 10-16 While the latter part of July did see a fall in the number of cases, the past week has seen an increase in the number of cases.  

A report in The Hindu, quoting the government, says that “Delhi has a capacity to do around 11,000 RT PCR tests in a day, only 6,261 such tests were done in the past 24 hours.”

According to the report, on August 22, of the total 19,435 tests done in the previous 24-hour period, 68.6 per cent of the tests were rapid antigen tests, which have shown a low positivity in the city compared to RT PCR tests.

So despite the bump in the number of cases last week and the concern over the capacity to conduct more tests, the administration’s inability to use its full capability is worrying although Delhi has done well over the past month.