West Bengal is reporting the lowest number of Covid cases since the middle of 2020, when the disease was taking hold of the state.
Public health experts and doctors said this could be the end of the pandemic in West Bengal, as well as in the rest of the country, but there was still a need to keep a close watch on Covid.
The disease has till date killed 21,531 people in the state.
On Thursday, November 17, West Bengal had only 14 new Covid cases and no deaths, according to the state health department.
The number had gone down to single digit — 9 — on November 15.
The number of new cases was more than 800 on November 17 last year. Doctors said although it seemed that Covid was on its way out, it was still not time to completely drop guard.
“The numbers have gone down, but in some other countries Covid cases are going up again. Also, the World Health Organization is identifying new variants of concern of the virus. So, it is too early to think we have finally got rid of Covid. Time has not yet come to drop our guard,” said Chandramouli Bhattacharya, infectious disease expert at Peerless Hospital.
“Stress should still be on vaccination and we should not let ourselves be overcome by vaccine fatigue.”
Health department data states that in West Bengal, 73,037,855 have taken the first dose, but only 15,324,424 have taken the third dose.
Hospitals have downsized Covid wards. At RN Tagore hospital, there are 20 beds for Covid patients.
“For nearly a month we did not have a single Covid patient. We will reduce the count to four next week,” said R. Venkatesh, of Narayana Health, which runs the RN Tagore hospital.