The National Capital DEHLI reported 6,608 new cases of coronavirus disease (Covid-19), recording fewer than 7,000 cases in a day while conducting the regular 60,000 daily tests for the first time since early-November.

The positivity rate — the number of samples that return positive among total tested — also dropped on Friday to 10.59%, the lowest since November.

Experts see positivity rate as a crucial metric to assess an outbreak in a community and, when this number is coupled with an increase in new cases, it can determine how fast a contagious disease is spreading.

Delhi accounted for 22.39 per cent of the fatalities reported across the country due to the coronavirus infection in a span of 24 hours by recording 131 deaths and became the largest contributor to the single-day COVID-19 deaths in India, the health ministry said .

Even in terms of new single-day cases, Delhi reported the highest number of infections, followed by Kerala and Maharashtra. the infection tally in the national capital to over five lakh, even as 131 new fatalities, the highest single-day death count till date, pushed the count to 7,943.

The ministry said 79.49 per cent of the 585 COVID fatalities reported in a span of 24 hours were from 10 states and Union territories — Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Meanwhile Congress president Sonia Gandhi reached Goa on Friday after her doctors advised her to shift out Delhi in view of the heavy pollution and poor air quality that aggravated her chest infection, people aware of the matter said.

A senior Congress functionary said the doctors had advised her to shift to a warmer place till the air quality in the national capital improves.

Sonia Gandhi, 73, arrived in Goa with her son and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Party general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is likely to join the two later sources told .

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Addressing the media, the Minister said, “The importance of sanitation and effective solid waste management has been brought to the forefront now due to the COVID crisis. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the present situation could have been much worse had it not been for the critical part that SBM-U has played in the last five years to ensure a high degree of cleanliness and sanitation in urban areas. Five years ago, we introduced Swachh Survekshan (SS), the annual cleanliness survey for urban India that has proven immensely successful when it comes to improving urban cleanliness through a spirit of healthy competition.

However, since it is a ranking system, several of our cities, despite doing exceptionally well, were not being recognized appropriately. The Ministry, therefore, devised the Star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities – a comprehensive framework similar to our examination systems where each ward in every city must achieve a certain standard across 24 different components of solid waste management (SWM) and is graded based on overall marks received”.

He further added, “Our aim is to institutionalize as well as bring consistency and transparency when it comes to SWM. This certification is not only an acknowledgement of the clean status of Urban Local Bodies and strengthened SWM systems but also a mark of trust and reliability akin to universally known standards. Moreover, the performance of cities under the Star Rating Protocol is crucial as it carries significant weightage when it comes to their final assessment in Swachh Survekshan.”

The protocol has been devised in a holistic manner including components such as cleanliness of drains & water bodies, plastic waste management, managing construction & demolition waste, etc. which are critical drivers for achieving garbage free cities. While the key thrust of this protocol is on SWM, it also takes care of ensuring certain minimum standards of sanitation through a set of prerequisites defined in the framework.

Also present at the conference was Shri Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, MoHUA who added, “To ensure that the Protocol has a SMART framework, we developed a three-stage assessment process. In the first stage, ULBs populate their progress data on the portal along with supporting documents within a particular timeframe. The second stage involves a desktop assessment by a third-party agency selected and appointed by MoHUA. Claims of cities that clear the desktop assessment are then verified through independent field level observations. In the recent phase of Star Rating Assessment, 1435 cities applied. During the assessments, 1.19 crore citizen feedbacks and over 10 lakh geo-tagged pictures were collected and 5175 solid waste processing plants were visited by 1210 field assessors.

While 698 cities cleared the desktop assessment, 141 cities have been certified with Star Rating during field assessment. The low number of certifications signifies the rigorous and robust certification mechanism of the protocol”. Launching the revised protocol for the Star Rating Framework, Shri Mishra elaborated, “Our endeavor is to constantly revisit and strengthen the framework basis the feedback received from cities. The new protocol will consider ward-wise geo-mapping, monitoring of SWM value chain through ICT interventions like Swachh Nagar App and zone-wise rating in cities with population of 50 lakh+”.

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