Delhi's coronavirus tally crossed 70,000 today with 3,788 fresh cases, surpassing Mumbai to become the worst hit city in the country, even as authorities prepared to conduct a house-to-house screening by July 6 as part of a revised containment strategy in the national capital.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also requested the Centre to withdraw the new system requiring assessment of every COVID-19 patient at a government-run facility, an issue on which the Lieutenant Governor and the AAP government have been having disagreement.
Mr Kejriwal said if the administration and police forcibly take patients to COVID care centres for their clinical assessment, it will be like holding them in detention for 15 days.
As COVID-19 cases continued to spike in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced extension of the lockdown in the containment zones till July 31. The lockdown in these zones was to end on June 30. With overall cases in the state inching towards 15,000, it is in the 7th position in the all India tally.
As daily testing of samples of blood and throat and nose swabs crossed two lakh for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, over 14,000 new coronavirus cases were registered in the country for the fifth day in a row to take the total count to 4,56,183, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The fatalities also rose by a record 465 and the death count stood at 14,476.
