Bengal on Thursday reported 1,916 new Covid-19 infections, including 277 from Calcutta.

In 24 hours till 9am on Thursday, the state logged 2,614 recoveries and 36 deaths, resulting in a drop in the total of active cases by 734 to 21,146.

This was 18 consecutive days of such a drop in the third wave, resulting in improvement by 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 the 7,457 of December 28 last year to 1.6 lakh on January 16.

Seven of the state’s 23 districts reported zero deaths. Calcutta logged five fatalities.

The positive confirmation rate was 3.94 per cent, compared to 4.61 on Wednesday. This was the third consecutive day in the third wave that the state reported a positive confirmation rate of less than 5 per cent in a 24-hour period.

In a pandemic situation, 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 recovery rate also improved for 18 consecutive days to reach 97.91 per cent. The national rate is 95.14.

The mortality rate is 1.04 per cent now.

Bengal has over 20.02 lakh cases now, since the first was detected in the state in March, 2020. The total includes more than 19.6 lakh recoveries and 20,723 deaths.