Second wave of Covid-19 has hit peak, experts feel cases will come down: CM Kejriwal

New Delhi: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said that the national capital may soon witness declining numbers of Covid-19.

Citing experts, the Chief Minister said that the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic has hit its peak in the capital and in coming days, the intensity as well as the number of fresh cases will start coming down.

In last few days, Delhi witnessed surge in number of Covid cases, with the city reporting close to 4000 Corona cases per day.

“All the experts believe that the second wave (of coronavirus), which had come in Delhi, appears to have hit its peak. Now, the cases will come down in the coming days,” Kejriwal told reporters.

“The COVID-19 cases in the city were by and large under control between July 1 and August 17 and on an average, 1,100-1,200 new cases were being reported everyday,” he said.

“From August 17, the cases rose slightly from around 1,100 to 1,500 and as a responsible government, we did not take any risk and immediately scaled up testing from around 20,000 to 60,000 tests per day. The best way to defeat coronavirus is to conduct aggressive testing to identify and isolate positive cases,” the chief minister said.

“The coronavirus cases have increased in Delhi because testing was massively scaled up. The daily cases were around 4,500 on September 16 which have now started coming down and currently, there are around 3,700 cases (daily),” he said.

Kejriwal hoped that the government steps, including increasing containment zones from 550 in mid-August to around 2,000 now, will gradually bring down the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the coming days.

On Wednesday, Delhi recorded 3,714 fresh COVID-19 cases as the cumulative corona count mounted to over 2.56 lakh, while the death toll stood at 5,087.

More than 60,000 COVID-19 tests were done in the city on Tuesday, according to the bulletin issued by the Delhi health department on Wednesday.