Without home isolation policy, won't have been possible to handle such massive surge: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain

 Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday asserted that the city government's home isolation policy was a "successful model" and had it not been implemented, it would not have been possible to handle such a massive surge in COVID-19 cases at present.

Delhi recorded its biggest single-day jump of 8,593 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday that took its infection tally to over 4.59 lakh, while 85 new fatalities pushed the national capital's death toll to 7,228, authorities said.

When asked about the huge spike in daily cases and deaths, Jain told reporters that the number of tests have been trebled at present, compared to the corresponding figures when the second peak had hit Delhi in mid-September, when over 4,000 daily cases were being recorded.

The Delhi government has significantly ramped up testing in the past few days, with the count on several times crossing the 60,000-mark.

The number of tests done per million, as on Tuesday was over 2.76 lakh while the total number of tests stood at over 52 lakh.

These fresh cases came out of 64,121 tests, including 19,304 RT-PCR tests, conducted the previous day. This is the highest number of RT-PCR tests conducted in a day till date. The number of rapid antigen tests stood at 44,817.

The city's positivity rate stood at 13.4 per cent, the bulletin said.

"Eighty to ninety per cent cases are recovering at home. Our home isolation policy was a successful model and had it not been implemented, it would not have been possible to handle such a massive surge in COVID-19 cases we are seeing today," he said.

On Chhath Puja arrangements, he said, as per the DDMA decision, observing the festival in water bodies has been banned since there is a very high probability of the infection spreading through water.

(IMAGE CREDITS:PTI)