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Delhi Overtakes Mumbai To Become India’s Biggest Covid-19 Hotspot: In Charts

Delhi has been adding nearly 3,326 cases everyday in the last seven days, compared with Mumbai’s 1,134 new cases.

Medical workers collect swab a sample for Covid-19 testing in India. (Source: PTI) 
Medical workers collect swab a sample for Covid-19 testing in India. (Source: PTI) 

Delhi now has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in India, surpassing Mumbai, as the pace of transmission spirals in the national capital.

New Delhi added 3,788 new cases on Wednesday, taking the total count to 70,390, according to the local government’s health bulletin. Mumbai—India’s largest Covid-19 hotspot till now—has reported 69,258 cases.

The number of viral infections in Delhi, home to nearly 18 million people, has risen rapidly ever since India eased its stringent national lockdown. The capital, which reported its first Covid-19 case on March 2, has added, on average, more than 3,326 cases in each of the last seven days compared with Mumbai’s 1,134.

Mumbai’s daily infections are down by nearly a third compared with a month ago. In Delhi, the number of new cases rose nearly eightfold during the period.
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The number of infections in Delhi is doubling at a faster pace than in Mumbai—12 days to Mumbai’s 40, according to BloombergQuint’s calculations. A month ago, Mumbai’s doubling rate was 12 days, while Delhi’s was 15.

The sudden surge in cases in Delhi could also be because of increased testing in the national capital. While testing in Delhi has increased from about 5,000 a day at the start of June to more than 16,000 a day now, Mumbai’s screening pace has remained stagnant at around 5,000.

In the last 20 days, total tests in Delhi has gone up by nearly 1.8 times to touch 401,648 as of June 23. Mumbai, however, ramped up its testing from 212,061 as of June 3 to 299,379 as of June 23.

Delhi has rolled out rapid antigen tests across city little more than a week ago to scale up testing capacity. Yet, Mumbai’s testing rate per million is still higher than Delhi’s.

The only parameter on which Delhi seems to be faring better then Mumbai is the rate at which the number of deaths have increased in the last seven days. While Mumbai saw 102 deaths on average in each of the last seven days, Delhi reported 66.

So far, Delhi has reported 2,365 fatalities due to the Covid-19. That compares with 3,964 casualties in Mumbai and 14,894 across India.

Delhi’s recovery rate, too, is higher at 59% compared with Mumbai’s 53%. While 41,437 patients have been cured in Delhi so far, about 37,008 recovered in Mumbai.

On Thursday, India added 16,922 new cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking the total count to 473,105 in Asia's third-largest economy, according to the Health Ministry's update on June 25. That includes 271,697 people who have recovered. Over the last 24 hours, India reported 418 deaths and 13,012 recoveries.