The number of Covid cases in Delhi has come down after registering a record surge a week ago, but the daily fatalities trend needs to be watched for the next few days to tell if the death count has reached its peak, according to medical experts.
Senior doctors at leading Covid facilities, both state-run and private, have emphasised that the peak in death cases happen generally a week or two after the peak in the daily cases tally.
Delhi saw a record surge in daily cases recently with over 28,000 cases registered in a day on January 13, and the positivity rate too had gone beyond 30 per cent on January 14.
The daily case count has come down in the last few days, and the city logged 12,306 cases on Thursday. It also recorded 43 deaths on that day, the highest since June 10. Experts said this is a general epidemiological trend and death count peak is generally seen 7-14 days after the peak in daily cases as patients' condition deteriorate later after testing positive.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Friday asserted that the danger of Covid-19 has subsided in the national capital and the situation is "quite under control".
He also said that the virus was the primary cause of death in only three of the 43 fatalities recorded the previous day.
A senior doctor at the Delhi Government-run Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences (ILBS) said, "Very few hospital admissions are being seen in this wave, compared to the previous ones.” “But any patient who has got admitted after testing positive, generally dies after his or her condition deteriorates in the next one week or so, and hence, death tally will peak later than the cases tally," the doctor said.
In this wave, led largely by the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, even if one family member is getting infected, almost the entire family is contracting the infection, the doctor said.
Because of this, everybody is getting isolated quickly, so the recovery is also taking place simultaneously and hence, “quick rise will also be followed by quick fall in cases", the senior doctor said. Nearly 400 deaths have been reported in the month of January so far, according to official data.
