Delhi adding Covid-19 cases faster than Maharashtra

India on Wednesday witnessed the highest single-day jump of 15,968 Covid-19 cases as it raced towards the five-lakh mark with Delhi outpacing Maharashtra in reporting fresh infections.

According to the Health Ministry, India had 4,56,183 total confirmed cases of Covid-19 out of which 2,58,685 had recovered and discharged from hospitals. In percentage terms, the recovery rate was 56.71%, the highest so far.

The fatalities due to the highly infectious disease too witnessed a sharp spike of 465 deaths in a single-day with the total deaths touching 14,476.

According to a DH Covid-19 Tracker, the total confirmed cases of Covid-19 had touched 4,71,032 at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday as against the 4,56,183 cases reported on Wednesday morning – an intra-day increase of 14,849 cases.

Delhi has emerged as the new hotspot as it was reporting new infections at a faster pace than Maharashtra.

On Wednesday, the national capital reported 3,947 new cases of the infectious disease as against 3,214 reported by Maharashtra.

A reason for this faster growth could be the increase in testing in the national capital following the intervention by the Centre last week.

India also crossed another significant landmark as the network of state-run and private laboratories the two-lakh-tests per day mark. This network of laboratories had tested 2.15 lakh samples for Covid-19 on Tuesday and a cumulative total of 73.52 lakh samples since the outbreak was first reported in India in January-end.

Of the 2.15 lakh samples tested on Tuesday, 1,71,587 were tested in government laboratories while 43,608 were tested in private facilities.

From a single laboratory in March, the Indian Council of Medical Research had established a network of 1,000 laboratories – 730 state-run and 270 private – for testing samples for Covid-19.