The average weekly test positivity rate in Delhi has now fallen by at least five percentage points in the last week, providing a much-needed glimmer of hope at a time when the Capital’s administration and citizens are engaged in a brutal fight against the city’s fourth Covid wave.
Data indicate that the first signs of recovery (with the positivity rate and, subsequently, cases beginning to plateau) for Delhi began to appear about two weeks after the city was placed under lockdown.
The step, experts said, appeared to have helped contain the spread of the disease, but they cautioned that lifting restrictions on social movement too soon might restart the spread of the infection.
According to the government’s bulletin on Friday, the daily positivity rate was 24.9 percent, staying below 25 percent for the second day in a row, even as the Capital added 19,832 new cases and 341 new deaths, bringing the total number of infections in the region to 1,292,867 and fatalities to 18,739.
In Delhi, 27.4 percent of all samples tested positive in the last week, compared to 32.5 percent the previous week. In the two weeks preceding the current one, the average positivity rate was consistently higher than 30%.
To be sure, even at 27.4 percent, the current average positivity rate in Delhi is more than five times the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended 5 percent threshold at which Covid-19 infections in an area can be said to be under control.
The positivity rate is an important metric that indicates how prevalent the virus is in the population and, over time, provides an indication of whether a region’s testing strategy is sufficient to contain the virus. In general, this metric acts as a predictor of the spread of new infections in a region; for example, if a region’s positivity rate is increasing, it means that cases will likely continue to rise (assuming the same amount of testing is maintained) in the coming days.
