Bengal on Friday reported 1,523 new Covid-19 infections, including 181 from Calcutta.

In 24 hours till 9am on Friday, the state also logged 2,421 recoveries and 35 deaths, resulting in a drop in the total of active cases by 933 to 20,213.

This was 19 consecutive days of such a drop in the third wave, resulting in improvement by over 87 per cent in the total since January 17. Prior to this turnaround, the total active caseload had gone up by nearly 22 times from 7,457 on December 28 last year to 1.6 lakh on January 16.

Eleven of the state’s 23 districts reported zero deaths. Calcutta logged 10.

The positive confirmation rate was 3.1 per cent, compared to 3.94 on Thursday. This was the fourth consecutive day in the third wave, and since December 29 last year, that the state reported a positive confirmation rate of less than 5 per cent. Friday was the 38th day since the escalation of the third wave in Bengal.

In a pandemic, a positive confirmation rate up to 5 per cent is considered tolerable. On January 10, the positive confirmation rate had reached an all-time high of 37.32.

Deemed a crucial indicator in the pandemic, the current level of the positive confirmation rate means one out of every 32 samples in the state testing positive. On January 10, it was two out of every five.

The recovery rate also improved for 19 consecutive days to reach 97.96 per cent. The national rate is 95.39.

Between December 29 and January 16, it had dropped by nearly eight percentage points, before recovering by close to eight percentage points in these 19 days.

In these 19 days, the state reported 2.45 lakh recoveries, which outweighed the 1.06 lakh new infections detected.

The mortality rate is 1.04 per cent now.

Bengal has over 20.03 lakh cases now, since the first was detected in the state in March, 2020. The total includes more than 19.62 lakh recoveries and 20,758 deaths.