Bengal on Saturday reported 521 new Covid-19 cases, taking the total number of infections to 16,711 so far, but the state’s recovery rate of 64.56 per cent is still far ahead of the national rate of 58.41.

Although Friday and Saturday with 1,063 new cases were a bit of a damper for Bengal after signs of a major turnaround after June 13, the state managed to keep its active cases at 5,293 as of Saturday, 400 less than two weeks ago.

In these two weeks, there were 6,013 new cases, outweighed by 6,247 recoveries.

Of the 521 new cases, around 97 per cent were reported from districts with a high volume of returnees. Calcutta alone reported 141.

The state’s Covid-19 toll also rose by 13 to touch 629. Of them, Calcutta alone accounted for 359 deaths.

Of the total deaths, the state government reported 470 or 74.72 per cent as deaths with comorbidity “present”. In two weeks, there were 166 Covid-19 deaths, but 152 of those had comorbidity “present”.

Bengal’s overall mortality rate stood at 3.76 per cent, that of Calcutta 6.64. The national mortality rate is 3.05 per cent.

“In two weeks, the mortality rate has gone down from 4.32 to 3.76 for Bengal, and from 8.16 to 6.64 for Calcutta. Lowering the mortality rate, getting it to a place better than the national rate is our foremost priority,” said a minister. A month ago, the state’s mortality rate was 6.5, while that of Calcutta 10.21.

The minister added: “In the past two weeks, the state had 36 per cent of the total cases and 58 per cent of the total recoveries (since the onset of the pandemic). The recovery rate rose by over 22 per cent. Despite the slight setback of last two days, we have had more good news than bad.”

Over 5.52 lakh people successfully completed quarantine, including around 2.34 lakh Shramik Special returnees. Barely 1.19 lakh people remain in quarantine now and are expected to complete the process in another week.

“Over 2.17 lakh people successfully completed quarantine in these two weeks, including over 1.17 lakh Shramik Special returnees,” said the minister.

The state reported 9,548 tests in 24 hours, taking the total test count to 4,58,343, with 5,093 tests per million.

“Even two weeks ago, we were at 3.25 lakh tests and 3,608 tests per million. We are all set to go past the 5 lakh tests landmark by (this coming) Wednesday or Thursday,” said the minister.

Owing to the considerable rise in new cases, positive confirmation rate or the percentage of people found infected among those tested deteriorated from 3.29 to 3.65 per cent in these two weeks.

Bengal reported occupancy of 21.83 per cent of the 10,472 Covid-19 beds in 78 dedicated hospitals, besides 6.76 per cent occupancy of the 6,908 beds of 106 safe homes.