Delhi’s second COVID-19 wave at its peak, experts believe infection rate to reduce soon, says Arvind Kejriwal

Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said the second wave of coronavirus pandemic has hit its peak in the national capital with experts hinting that the cases of infection will decline in the coming days.

He said the government was "keeping its fingers crossed" and hoped that the COVID-19 cases will "gradually" come down due to the steps taken by the AAP dispensation.

Delhi has been witnessing a surge in the number of coronavirus cases in the last few days.

"All the experts believe that the second wave (of coronavirus), which had come in Delhi, appears to have hit its peak. Now, the cases will come down in the coming days," Kejriwal told reporters.

The COVID-19 cases in the city were by and large under control between 1 July and 17 August and on an average, 1,100-1,200 new cases were being reported everyday, he said.

"From 17 August, the cases rose slightly from around 1,100 to 1,500 and as a responsible government, we did not take any risk and immediately scaled up testing from around 20,000 to 60,000 tests per day.

"The best way to defeat coronavirus is to conduct aggressive testing to identify and isolate positive cases," the chief minister said.

"The coronavirus cases have increased in Delhi because testing was massively scaled up. The daily cases were around 4,500 on 16 September which have now started coming down and currently, there are around 3,700 cases (daily)," he said.

According to the chief minister, if the testing would have scaled down to the previous level of 20,000 tests (daily), the cases would also have come down to around 1,500 per day in the city.

Kejriwal hoped that the government steps, including increasing containment zones from 550 in mid-August to around 2,000 now, will gradually bring down the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the coming days.

On Wednesday, Delhi recorded 3,714 fresh COVID-19 cases as the infection tally in the city mounted to over 2.56 lakh, while the death toll rose to 5,087.

More than 60,000 COVID-19 tests were done in the city on Tuesday, according to the bulletin issued by the Delhi health department on Wednesday.

The total number of active cases, as on Wednesday, stood at 30,836, it said.