Mumbai on Friday recorded 20, 971 new coronavirus infections, the highest one-day spike to date, while Delhi registered the highest single-day spike too with the national capital reporting 17,335 new infections, highest since May 8 last year
Mumbai also saw six deaths due to the pandemic, highest in a day in the last two months, said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in a release.
The cases in Mumbai went up by 790 as compared to Thursday.
The caseload of the country's financial capital rose to 8,74,780, while death toll reached 16,394.
On Thursday, the city had reported 20,181 new infections, which was a new record, and four deaths.
On November 4, 2021, the metropolis had recorded six fatalities.
Speaking to a Marathi news channel, Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said a new wave of the pandemic began from December 21, 2021, when the city recorded 327 new daily cases.
Since then, cases have risen 6,313.14 per cent.
Chahal, however, maintained that there was no need for lockdown as the death rate, bed occupancy and medical oxygen demand were low.
The rise in daily cases is 230.40 per cent since January 1, 2022, when Mumbai logged 6,347 new COVID-19 cases.
But of 20,971 new cases found on Friday, 17,616 or 85 per cent were asymptomatic and only 1,395 patients were admitted to hospitals while only 88 were put on oxygen support, the BMC said.
The number of tests has been ramped up too. As per the BMC release, 72,442 coronavirus tests were carried out in the city in the last 24 hours, compared to 67,487 on Thursday.
With this the tally of COVID-19 tests conducted so far climbed to 1,40,64,537.
The BMC also highlighted that 6,531 of 35,645 hospital beds, or 18.3 per cent, are occupied in the city.
The overall growth rate of COVID-19 cases rose to 1.23 per cent for the period between December 31, 2021 to January 6, 2022, while the caseload doubling rate slipped to 56 days.
With 8,490 recovered patients being discharged during the day, Mumbai's active COVID-19 cases rose to 91,731 from 79,260 within 24 hours.
The cumulative total of recovered patients in Mumbai is 7,64,053, while the city has a recovery rate of 87 per cent.
After the BMC modified the guidelines for sealing buildings on discovery of patients, the number of sealed buildings went down to 123 from 502 and that of containment zones to six from 32.
During the second wave, Mumbai's peak daily rise in cases was 11,163, reported on April 4, 2021, while the highest 90 fatalities were witnessed on May 1, 2021.
In Delhi, nine more patients succumbed to the virus in the past 24 hour, while the positivity rate mounted to 17.73 per cent, according to data shared by the city health department.
This is a significant rise from Thursday when the city recorded 15,097 new cases at a positivity rate of 15.34 per cent.
On Wednesday and Tuesday, 10,665 and 5,481cases were recorded with a positivity rate of 11.88 per cent and 8.37 per cent respectively, according to official figures.
On Friday, the count mounted to 17,335 with a positivity rate of 17.73 per cent, according to the latest health bulletin.
This is the highest single-day rise since May 8 when 17,364 cases were logged with a positivity rate of 23.34 per cent. As many as 332 deaths were also recorded on that day.
The huge spike in fresh cases over the past several days is being recorded amid a significant jump in cases of new Omicron variant of COVID.
The death toll due to the coronavirus infection in Delhi has now risen to 25,136.
The number of cumulative cases on Thursday stood at 15,06,798. Over 14.41 lakh patients have recovered from the infection.
During the height of the second wave of the pandemic, 28,395 cases, the highest-ever single-day tally here, and 277 deaths were recorded in Delhi on April 20 last year, as per official figures.
Nine COVID-19 deaths were reported here in December last year, and seven in November, according to official data. Delhi had recorded four Covid deaths in October and five in September.
A total of 97,762 tests -- 78,154 RT-PCR tests and 19,608 rapid antigen tests -- were conducted a day ago, the bulletin said.
