Covid-19 surge: 7-hour night curfew for 24 days in New Delhi

India's national capital Delhi will be brought under night curfew for seven hours from today for the next 24 days to control the quickly-spreading coronavirus cases in the city.

The Delhi government announced night curfew would be in force from 10 pm (local time) to 5 am after the city recorded 3,548 fresh cases of Covid-19 on Monday, while 15 more people succumbed to the infection, taking the death toll to 11,096, according to the Delhi health department.

The decision has been taken given the rising positivity rate in Delhi, which has reached 5.54 percent as fresh cases rose sharply in the last few weeks.

N K Mehra, former dean of All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, said the positivity rate breaching the five percent mark clearly shows that the virus is "unmanageable."

"In January, the test positivity rate in Delhi had come down to around one percent, and the figure remained low till about two weeks ago," he said.

In the past five days alone, 64 people have died due to Covid-19 in Delhi.

The fresh surge in cases came even after India stepped up its vaccination against Covid-19, with more than 43 lakh doses administered in the last 24 hours, the highest on a single day in the country so far, according to the Health Ministry.

With this, the cumulative number of vaccine doses administered in the country crossed 8.31 crore today.

The total Covid-19 tests conducted across the country crossed the 25-crore mark, while the cumulative positivity rate has increased to 5.07 percent, leaving doctors concerned.