Over 2,550 ambulance calls daily from Covid patients in Delhi for past one week: Official data

New Delhi, April 22

Over 2,550 distress calls from COVID-19 patients were dispatched to ambulances in the national capital daily for the last one week, numbers compiled by the city government show, highlighting the severity of the ongoing wave of the pandemic.

The cumulative figure of 17,924 calls in the past one week do not include the ones made by patients to private ambulances.

According to data, at least 2,560 calls from coronavirus patients were being dispatched to ambulances in the city every day for the past week as the number of cases continue to show an upward trend in Delhi.

This is a visible jump from the calls made by patients every day to ambulances during the first week of April, which was within the range of 1,200-1,900.

While 2,279 calls were dispatched to ambulances on both April 15 and 16, the number went up to 2,861 on April 20 — highest in the last week—and 2,618 on April 21.

A total of 1,347 people succumbed to the virus during the period.

The reported number of fatalities was 277 on April 20, 240 on April 19, 161 on April 18, 167 on April 17, 141 on April 16 and 112 on April 15.

Given the rise in number of COVID-19 deaths, the civic authorities in Delhi have now started working on a real-time monitoring system and a central control room for crematoriums and burial grounds as well.

Delhi recorded 24,638 fresh COVID-19 cases and 249 deaths due to the viral disease on Wednesday, while the positivity rate stood at 31.28 per cent, meaning almost every third sample tested positive, amid a growing clamour for oxygen and hospital beds in the city. PTI