Bengal on Friday reported yet another high in daily Covid-19 tests at 45,620, closing in on its next target of 50,000, as the total count of examined samples crossed 20.66 lakh with 22,960 tests per million people.

Prior to this, the highest number of intra-day tests had been 45,291 recorded on Thursday.

Steady rise in the tests, coupled with relatively lower caseload, improved the positive confirmation rate in 12 days from 8.9 to 8.45 per cent. Deemed a key indicator, the positive confirmation rate is the percentage of positive cases out of samples tested. A decreasing positive confirmation rate is indicative of reducing levels of Covid-19 spread.

“From the sixth or seventh spot even a couple of weeks ago, we managed to drop out of the top 10 in the list of states and Union territories with the highest positive confirmation rate. We are 11th now with Puducherry, Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in the top five,” said a Bengal minister.

For the 12th consecutive day, the state reported a fall in the total number of active patients with 3,305 recoveries and 2,978 new cases being recorded in 24 hours till 9am on Friday.

The total active cases on August 23 had been 28,069. The figure was 23,654 on Friday.

“We are looking to get the total active cases to less than 20,000 very soon. When we do that, it will be a spectacular achievement for a state as large and densely populated as ours,” said the minister.

Bengal now has a total of 1.74 lakh coronavirus patients since the first case was found on March 17. Of the total cases, nearly 1.48 lakh are recoveries and 3,452 are fatalities.

“Our recovery rate is 84.48 now, substantially higher than the national rate of 77.23 per cent,” said the minister.

Of 58 deaths logged on Friday, 17 were from the city.

The state government reported as comorbid 2,983 (86.4 per cent) of the total 3,452 deaths.

In a trend that began about a month ago, the five most high-incidence districts of Bengal — Calcutta, North 24-Parganas, South 24-Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly —collectively recorded a fall in the total active cases by 100 on Friday.

For instance, from the 7,041 active cases on August 9, the city improved to 4,110 on Friday.

The overall mortality rate stayed at 1.97, while the national rate is 1.73 per cent.

“But Calcutta’s mortality rate is still over 3 (3.21 on Friday). Reducing that is a top priority. With 1,350 deaths in total, the city has contributed around 40 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths,” said the minister.

Bengal reported 32.47 per cent occupancy of 12,275 Covid-19 beds at 90 hospitals. Telemedicine services have been provided to over 1.66 lakh people and 4,275 of them were in the past 24 hours.