New Delhi, Apr 18 (IANS): Continuing the recent trend, the national capital on Saturday reported a record single-day spike of 24,375 fresh Covid cases, while 167 persons succumbed to the virus in the past 24 hours, as the data released by the health department of Delhi government.

With this, the number of active cases in Delhi has mounted to 69,799, of which 32,156 are under home isolation.

With 24,375 new cases, the number of cumulative positive cases in Delhi reached 8,97,998, including 7,46,239 who have recovered from the disease.

The test positivity rate in the national capital stood at an alarming 24.56 per cent, while the death toll zoomed to 11,960 till Saturday evening.

Delhi has been reporting an exponential surge in the number of Covid-19 cases for the past few weeks, reporting over 10,000 new cases a day for a week now.

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday that the city hospitals are running out of oxygen stock, beds and the life-saving drug Remdesivir due to the exponential surge in the number of Covid cases in the last one week.

"The AAP government is trying its best to increase the number of beds. I hope that we will be able to add 6,000 more beds in the next two three days, and all the new beds will have oxygen sets," Kejriwal said.

At present, out of the total 17,322 beds available in Delhi government-run hospitals, 13,397 are occupied and 3,925 are vacant. Of the total 1,299 ICU beds available for Covid-19 patients, 1,166 are occupied and only 133 beds are vacant, according to Delhi government's Corona app.

The Chief Minister said that in the past few days, the Delhi government has taken several steps to increase the number of beds in both government and private hospitals.

"We are trying to ensure that the number of new beds are equipped with oxygen support so that the serious patients can be treated," Kejriwal said.