NEW DELHI: At a time when Delhi is reporting a rise in Covid cases, the number of containment zones dropped by more than six-fold from 919 to 148 in a single day. What makes this dip interesting is that there was a steady rise in containment zones (see box) in the last few days.
According to health officials, the reason behind this could be that a large chunk of accrued Covid cases were reported on a particular day resulting in delisting of the zones in one go. Another official added that there might be a policy change on containment zones because of which a drastic fall was noticed on Thursday.
Under the city government’s Operation SHIELD, an area is designated as a containment zone when three or more Corona positive cases are reported. If no positive cases are reported inside a containment zone for the last four weeks, the area is removed from the list.
The Morning Standard tried to reach out to the nodal officer responsible who maintains data on containment zones, but he remained unavailable. According to an official from the health department, cases are increasing but the prevailing variants are not as strong as earlier because of which people are not reporting infections.
But the explanation does not hold ground as over 1,000 daily new cases was reported for the seventh consecutive day on Thursday. While the city reported 1,490 cases and two fatalities, the positivity rate stood at 4.62%. Delhi now has a total of 5,250 active Covid cases.
Health Minister Satyendar Jain, meanwhile, said that though Covid cases have increased, people were not developing severe symptoms. ‘‘This is because our population is fully vaccinated and a large number of people have had the infection in the past.’’ Jain said the government was keeping a close watch on Covid cases.
“The Delhi Government is closely monitoring the situation. Our health-care infrastructure has already been completely revamped. We have set aside 10,000 beds for Corona patients. We are fully prepared to deal with any situation that may arise,” the health minister added.