NEW DELHI: Delhi recorded 1,412 fresh coronavirus cases on Saturday, the city's biggest single-day spike in infections this month, bringing the infection tally to over 1.60 lakh while the death toll rose to 4,284, authorities said.
Fourteen more fatalities linked to the novel coronavirus were recorded in the last 24 hours, they said.
According to the Delhi government's health bulletin, a total of 19,435 tests -- 6,090 RTPCR/CBNAAT/TrueNat tests and 13,345 rapid antigen tests -- have been conducted in the last 24 hours.
So far 14,12,363 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Delhi while the number of tests per million population stands at 74,334 in the city.
The positivity rate stands at 7.26 per cent while the recovery rate is 90.07 per cent.
Delhi has seen a fluctuation in the number of coronavirus cases since August 1.
On August 1, the number of cases was 1,118 while for the next three days, the number of infections reported in a single-day stayed below the 1,000 mark.
From August 5 to August 9, the number of fresh COVID-19 cases again stayed above the 1,000 mark only to come down to 707 on August 10.
As many as 1,404 cases were recorded on August 8, the previous highest single-day spike of August.
Three days between August 11 and August 22 saw less than 1,000 fresh cases being reported -- August 13 (956), August 16 (652), and August 17 (787).
With the 1,412 new cases, the tally has now risen to 1,60,016, the Saturday's health bulletin said.
The active case count stands at 11,594, up from 11,426 the previous day, while 1,44,138 patients have either recovered from the infection, been discharged or have migrated out of the city, according to the bulletin.
The number of patients in home isolation is 5,791.
Out of 14,124 total beds in hospitals, 3,600 are occupied.
As many as 3,597 beds of COVID Care Centres are occupied by people under quarantine including travellers who came by Vande Bharat Mission and bubble flights.
The number of containment zones stands at 591 in Delhi.
In a related development, an order has been issued for winding up healthcare facilities operating in banquet halls in linkage with the designated COVID hospitals of the Delhi government.
On Friday, Delhi had recorded 1,250 new COVID-19 cases, which took the caseload to 1,58,604 while the death toll rose to 4270 with 13 more fatalities.
The number of COVID-19 containment zones in Delhi has risen from 539 on August 1 to 591 on August 21, with officials attributing the rise to smaller areas being contained now.
According to data, the number of containment zones had decreased to 496 in the national capital on August 2 and had witnessed a marginal increase to 499 on August 4.
The following days, the number declined to 481 and 466.
On August 12, the number of containment zones went past 500.
In July, the number of such areas was more than 700 in Delhi, but it gradually declined in August owing to the government allowing the "red" zones to be denotifified 14 days after the discharge of the last confirmed case, instead of the earlier norm of 28 days.
The number of containment zones was 591 in Delhi on Friday, according to a list available on the Revenue department's website.
The maximum of 137 active containment zones is in Southwest district, followed by West (63), South (55) and North (50).
All the other districts have less than 50 active containment zones with New Delhi and Northwest districts having 17 such areas each.
The total number of active containment zones in the national capital is 466 while 125 zones are in the process of scaling down towards decontainment.
Officials said the containment zone plan is now more specific and with smaller zones being contained, people are also not feeling inconvenienced.
East District Magistrate Arun Kumar Mishra said carving out the containment zones is an important tool in containing the spread of COVID-19.
"We keep a regular watch on the situation and do the needful. The containment zones in East Delhi are smaller in size. There are presently 24 such zones in the district," he added.
"If we increase the number of containment zones, we can contain the virus better. The number of days after which an area can be denotifified has also been reduced now," an official from West district said.
The district always had smaller containment zones and once or twice, when the size of such areas was increased, problems were witnessed, he said, adding that smaller containment zones mean better monitoring and people do not suffer as well.
"Sometimes, when we increase the size of such zones, they never end up being decontained. We are doing micro containment so that the virus does not spread," the official said.