'Three times more testing': Satyendar Jain on surge in Covid-19 cases in Delhi
At least 17,000 RT-PCR tests were conducted on Tuesday in DelhiThe Delhi Health Minister's comments came amid a surge in Covid-19 cases in the national capital
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain has said that three times more tests are being carried out now as compared to the last peak in number of positive novel coronavirus cases.
At least 17,000 RT-PCR tests were conducted on Tuesday in the national capital.
Satyendar Jain's comments came on Wednesday amid a surge in Covid-19 cases in Delhi.
"Three times more tests are being done now as compared to the last peak. No doubt the third peak is here, hope cases fall in the next couple of days. 17,000 RTPCR tests were conducted yesterday, we have increased testing," news agency ANI quoted Jain, as saying, on the recent surge in Delhi Covid-19 cases.
On increasing ICU beds for coronavirus patients admitted to the Delhi hospitals, the Health Minsiter said: "We had already issued an order earlier to private hospitals for increasing ICU beds but Delhi High Court stayed that. Hope we get a vacation tomorrow from the Supreme Court on our plea against HC stay."
Jain went on to say that the Delhi government has written a letter to the Modi government to increase the number of beds in ICU.
"We have asked the central government to increase about 1,100 beds and 300 ICU beds in government hospitals. There are 11 districts inside Delhi, each district has more than 80 mobile bans which are collect samples and send them to the lab for testing," Jain said.
Meanwhile, Delhi on Tuesday recorded its sharpest single-day spike of 7,830 new cases of coronavirus, which took the national capital's infection tally to more than 4.5 lakh, and 83 more deaths, the highest since 16 June.
The fresh cases, which took Delhi's case count to 4,51,382, came out of 59,035 tests conducted the previous day. The positivity rate stood at 13.26%, as per the latest health department bulletin.
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