The recent surge in Delhi seems to have spilled over to the neighbouring districts of Haryana as well. The state has been detecting large number of cases in areas adjoining Delhi, in the districts of Gurugram, Faridabad and Sonepat, in the last few days, and …

Written by Amitabh Sinha
| Pune |
Updated: June 1, 2020 12:04:34 pm
Covid-19 Isolation ward at GTB Hospital in New Delhi. (EXPRESS PHOTO BY PRAVEEN KHANNA)Possibly because of the opening of several activities, including limited public transport, after the third phase of lockdown ended on May 18, Delhi has been witnessing a surge in its novel Coronavirus cases in the last one week. On Sunday, Delhi recorded 1295 new infections, which was the fourth consecutive day of 1000-plus cases in the city.
In the last one week, there has been an increase of almost 6,000 cases in the national capital, which now has close to 20,000 cases. But more worrying has been the sharp increase in the number of dead. In the last two weeks, there has been almost a four-fold rise in the number of deaths, from 123 on May 15 to 473 now. As a city, only Mumbai has a bigger caseload, and more number of dead, than Delhi.
But, till now, Delhi is not faced with the kind of hospital or manpower shortage that Mumbai is staring at. Mumbai, which has close to 40,000 infections has already begun converting large public premises, like one in the Bandra Kurla complex, into makeshift hospitals, at least parts of which are equipped to handle even patients requiring. A few big parking lots are also being used as isolation centres.
But that is also because Mumbai is dealing with a far bigger problem that Delhi right now. The number of active cases in Mumbai, more than 21,000, is more than Delhis total infections. And it does not have as many large government hospitals as Delhi has.
With more relaxations in lockdown rules coming into effect from today, there is likely to be another surge in the number of infections in the coming days.
The recent surge in Delhi seems to have spilled over to the neighbouring districts of Haryana as well. The state has been detecting large number of cases in areas adjoining Delhi, in the districts of Gurugram, Faridabad and Sonepat, in the last few days, and has more than 2,000 infections. There has been an almost 80 per cent increase in the infection numbers in the state in the last one week.
On Sunday, more than 8,500 new cases were reported from across the country. The total number of infections in India is now more than 1.9 lakh. Close to half of them, more than 91,000 have so far recovered from the disease.
Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi and Gujarat, the top four states with maximum caseloads, have been contributing the largest number of cases, almost 70 per cent of all new cases discovered every day, while Bihar, Assam, Haryana, Kerala, and currently even Delhi, are the states that are growing at the fastest pace right now.
States that are growing extremely slowly include Punjab, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh. The doubling time of cases in each of them is in excess of 25 days right now.

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