Bengal on Tuesday reported 736 new Covid-19 infections, including 108 from Calcutta, a three-digit figure in 24 hours for the third consecutive day since the escalation of the third wave from December 29 last year.
In 24 hours till 9am on Tuesday, the state also logged 1,559 recoveries and 32 deaths, including five from Calcutta, which resulted in a drop in the total number of active cases by 855 to 16,009.
After 835 on Sunday and 641 on Monday, 736 new infections were detected despite 39,347 tests done in 24 hours till 9am on Tuesday. This number was around 15,000 and 14,000 more than the tests that had been done on Monday and Sunday, respectively.
The state’s positive confirmation rate or the percentage of samples testing positive also improved to 1.87 per cent from 2.59 per cent on Monday.
This was the first time since Christmas last year — 45 days ago — that the positive confirmation rate was below 2 per cent.
It means one out of every 53 samples in the state tested positive. On January 10, when the positive confirmation rate had reached an all-time high for Bengal at 37.32 per cent, it was two out of every five.
This was also eight consecutive days in the third wave in Bengal when positive confirmation rate was below5 per cent in a 24-hour period. In a pandemic situation, up to 5 per cent is considered tolerable.
This was 23 consecutive days of such a drop in the third wave, resulting in a dip of over 90 per cent in total active cases since January 17. Prior to this turnaround, the total active caseload had risen nearly 22 times from 7,457 on December 28 to 1.6 lakh on January 16.
Bengal’s recovery rate also improved for 23 consecutive days to reach 98.16 per cent. The national rate is 96.46.
In the 23 days, the state reported 2.53 lakh recoveries, which outweighed the 1.09 lakh new infections detected.
Twelve of the state’s 23 districts reported zero deaths. The mortality rate is 1.04 per cent now.
Bengal has over 20.07 lakh cases now, since the first was detected in the state in March, 2020. The total includes more than 19.7 lakh recoveries and 20,884 deaths.
