The national Capital recorded 1,520 fresh Covid cases with one person succumbing to the virus in the last 24 hours.
According to a health bulletin issued on Saturday, the positivity rate, which is indicative of the spread of infection in the community, stood at 5.10 per cent on Saturda with 29,775 tests having been conducted.
Delhi had recorded 1,607 Covid-19 cases and two deaths on Friday, while the positivity rate was recorded at 5.28 per cent.
The health bulletin data showed that with these new cases, the national capital's overall Covid tally has increased to 18,83,075 while the death toll has risen to 26,175. There have been four other single-day instances when the positivity rate crossed the 5% mark this month, mostly owing to fewer tests. In fact, the rate likely remained under 5% over the last two weeks because the number of tests was gradually increased from less than 10,000 to over 30,000.
The positivity rate usually tends to drop if the number of tests is increased suddenly. The increase, experts believe, is because of all Covid-19 norms being relaxed. There is no threat from a new variant so far, according to genomic sequencing labs.
The national capital on Thursday had recorded 1,490 COVID-19 cases and two deaths, and the positivity rate had stood at 4.62 per cent.
The number of daily COVID-19 cases in Delhi had touched Rohini area as an "abode of lakesrecord high of 28,867 on January 13 during the third wave of the pandemic.The city had recorded a positivity rate of 30.6 per cent on January 14, the highest during the third wave of the pandemic, which was largely due to highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus. The number of patients under home-isolation is 4,044 on Saturday, the bulletin said.There are 9,586 beds for COVID-19 patients in Delhi hospitals and 154 (1.61 per cent) of them are occupied, it added.