New Delhi: A rise in Covid cases in the past few weeks in Delhi-NCR had triggered the possibility of a fourth wave.
Union Health Ministry officials had noted that the number of cases was rounding up to 1000 every day in Delhi for the past five days. However, a slowdown in fresh cases has come as a relief. The daily infection had crossed the 1000 mark in Delhi on April 20 after more than two months this year. The daily positivity rate was recorded at around 4.8 to 5 per cent and similar patterns were observed in the adjoining states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. New data by Covid analysts, however, deny the possibility of a fourth wave.
The analysts pointed out that the positivity rate was recorded as stable and that the hospitalization rate due to Covid in Delhi remained under 1 per cent despite the recent rise in Covid cases. A similar trend was observed across the country with daily Covid cases staying between 2000 and 3000 in the past few days. On Monday, the new cases were recorded 2 per cent lower compared to the previous day.Flattening Delhi graphAccording to the government data, the daily positivity rate dropped to 4.4 per cent on April 24 from 4.8 per cent the previous day. “The growth of active cases is slowing down in Delhi and so is the daily average TPR, which is beginning to decrease. I don’t see a worrying situation in Delhi at the moment and I believe the recent uptick is indeed losing momentum,” health economist Rijo M John told Moneycontrol.Gautam Menon, a professor of Biology and Physics at Ashoka University, specialising in infectious disease modelling stated that no indication of the kind of exponential rise in Covid cases was observed that would signal a new wave. “More importantly, we are not seeing hospital and ICU admissions increasing in parallel, indicating that these cases are very largely mild, although we should wait a bit more to be sure of this,” Gautam Menon said.