Bengal on Saturday reported 672 new Covid-19 infections, including 89 from Calcutta, a three-digit figure for a week for the first time since the escalation of the third wave, evident since December 29 last year.

The state also logged 1,347 recoveries and 25 deaths — six from Calcutta — resulting in a drop in the total of active cases by 700 to 13,484.

This was the 27th consecutive day of such a drop in the third wave, resulting in improvement by 92 per cent in the total since January 17. Prior to this, the total active caseload had gone up nearly 22 times from the 7,457 of December 28 last year to 1.6 lakh on January 16.

The positive confirmation rate or percentage of samples testing positive is now 1.65 per cent. Deemed a crucial indicator in the pandemic, a positive confirmation rate of up to 5 per cent is considered tolerable. On January 10, the positive confirmation rate had reached an all-time high for the state at 37.32. The current level of the positive confirmation rate means one out of every 61 samples in the state tested positive. On January 10, it was two out of every five.

Recovery rate in the state also improved for 27 consecutive days to reach 98.29 per cent now. The national rate is 97.37 per cent.

Between December 29 and January 16, it had dropped by nearly eight percentage points, before recovering by almost eight percentage points over these 27 days.
In the 27 days, the state reported nearly 2.59 lakh recoveries, which outweighed the 1.12 lakh new infections detected.

Twelve of the state’s 23 districts reported zero deaths. The mortality rate is 1.04 per cent.

Bengal has over 20.1 lakh cases now, since the first was detected in the state in March, 2020. The total includes close to 19.76 lakh recoveries and 20,990 deaths.