Delhi close to Covid-19 herd immunity?

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People wearing protective face masks stand in a line to enter a metro station amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New Delhi, India. (Photo courtesy: Reuters)

(TibetanReview.net, Feb03’21) – Every second resident of India’s capital Delhi has been exposed to Covid-19 and has developed antibodies, the Delhi government has announced Feb 2, unveiling the results of the latest round of sero survey. The survey has revealed that 56.1% people in Delhi have antibodies, which meant more than half of its population was infected with the coronavirus and has recovered, noted the timesofindia.com Feb 3.

Delhi’s health minister Satyendar Jain has said it was up to experts to say whether the city had developed herd immunity but it was surely getting there. He has urged people to keep following Covid-appropriate behaviour and not let their guard down. The report cited experts as saying seroprevalence in 50%-60% or more in a population indicates herd immunity because the chain of transmission is broken and the spread of the disease diminishes.

The report cited Dr Sanjay Rai, professor of community medicine at AIIMS, as saying the city was unlikely to witness another major outbreak now.

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Meanwhile the latest data from India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare show that there were 11,039 new Covid-19 cases and 110 new deaths in the country in the past 24 hours as of Feb 3 at 8 AM, taking their cumulative totals to 10,777,284 cases and 154,596 deaths respectively. Both the daily numbers were higher than those reported the day before.

A total of 10,462,631, or 97.08%, had recovered while the number of active cases was 160,057, or 1.49% of the total. The case fatality rate was 1.43%. The percentage figures were mostly significant improvement over those reported the day before.

The latest daily number of new cases, at 11,039, was less than the daily number of those who had recovered, at 14,225, leading to a decrease in the number of active cases by 3,296.

Eight states that saw the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours were: Kerala (5,716), Maharashtra (1,927), Tamil Nadu (510), Karnataka (395), Chhattisgarh (330) and Gujarat (285), Punjab (204) and West Bengal (203). 

Six states with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours were: Maharashtra (30), Kerala (16); Punjab (12), West Bengal (9), Uttar Pradesh (6), and Chattisgarh (5).

The health ministry has said that 14 states and Union Territories (UT’s) had not reported any Covid-19 deaths in the last 24 hours. These included Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur, Puducherry, Goa, Odisha and Assam.

Also, 15 states and UT’s have reported less than 10 or no new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours.

India is currently the country with the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the fourth highest number of deaths in cumulative numbers.

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Across the world the number of Covid-19 cases totaled 103,967,293 and the deaths 2,255,360, according to the tally of Johns Hopkins University as of 4:52 PM on Feb 3, 2021.

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