Covid-19 Fourth Wave: Delhi logs over 1,600 new cases, positivity rate now at 5.28%

(Photo credit: ANI)

As the threat of the fourth wave of Covid-19 continues to peak in the county with daily rising cases, Delhi in the last 24 hours added another 1,607 cases on the block while two people died of coronavirus infection in the national capital, according to the health bulletin released on Saturday morning.

With these new cases, Delhi’s overall Covid-19 tally has risen to 18,81,555 while the death toll has touched 26,174.

The Covid positivity rate in the capital now stands at 5.28%

The national capital has been witnessing a surge in daily virus cases for the past few days owing to which the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government has reintroduced the mask mandate in the public places just days after it was revoked.

Delhi on Thursday had recorded 1,490 Covid-19 cases with a positivity rate of 4.62 per cent and two deaths.

 A total of 30,459 tests were conducted on Thursday, according to Friday’s health bulletin.

Meanwhile, on Saturday India saw an overall single-day rise of 3,688 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of Covid-19 cases to 4,30,75,864, while the active cases increased to 18,684, the government said.

According to the Union Health Ministry data updated at 8 am, the death toll rose to 5,23,803 with 50 more fatalities

New Omicron BA.12 variant found in India

The health department of Bihar on Thursday detected a new variant of Omicron in the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS).

The new variant BA.12 is 10 times more dangerous than BA.2 which was detected during the third wave of Corona in the country.

Prof Dr Namrata Kumari, the HOD of the microbiology department of IGIMS, said: "Keeping in view the rising Covid cases, we had started genome sequencing of samples of Omicron variant of Corona. There were 13 samples tested and one of them had BA.12 strains. The remaining 12 samples have BA.2 strains."

The BA.12 variant was first detected in the US.