India: Lockdown in Delhi extended by a week amid COVID-19 spike

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal extended lockdown in the national capital by a week due to the massive surge in COVID-19 cases in the city.

"We had imposed a 6-day lockdown in Delhi. The lockdown is being extended to next Monday (May 3) till 5 am," said the Chief Minister while addressing the press conference on Sunday.

The national capital has recorded the highest single-day toll with 24,103 cases of coronavirus for the city since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Kejriwal had last week announced a week-long complete 'lockdown' from April 19, 10 pm till April 26 at 5 am.

Prior to that, the Delhi government had announced a weekend curfew in the national capital from 10 pm on April 16 till 6 am on April 19, and the closure of malls, gymnasiums and auditoriums till April 30 amid the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Delhi on Saturday reported 24,103 new COVID-19 cases and 357 deaths, the highest single-day toll for the city since the outbreak of the pandemic. This is the third successive day the national capital has seen the highest daily fatalities due to coronavirus. The city now has 93,080 active cases.

A Delhi Health Department bulletin said the total coronavirus cases count in the city has gone up to 10,04,782 and death toll has gone up to 13,898.

The positivity rate in Delhi is 32.27 per cent and the case fatality rate is 1.38 per cent.

A total of 22,695 patients also recovered from the disease taking the total number of recoveries to 8,97,805.