Bengal on Friday reported 3,805 new Covid-19 infections, including 481 from Calcutta.

In 24 hours till 9am on Friday, the state also logged 13,767 recoveries and 34 deaths, resulting in a drop in the total of active cases by 9,996 to 45,729.

This was the 12th consecutive day of such a drop in the third wave, resulting in improvement by over 71 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.

The positive confirmation rate — the percentage of samples testing positive for the novel coronavirus — was 6.15 per cent, compared to 9.02 on Thursday. In a pandemic, a positive confirmation rate of up to 5 per cent is considered tolerable.

Friday was the 31st day since the escalation of the third wave in Bengal, evident from the Covid-19 stats since December 29 last year.

In these 31 days, the state has logged around 3.55 lakh new infections (including 1.9 lakh from Calcutta). The state also logged 3.16 lakh recoveries and 782 casualties.
However, since January 17, the state reported 79,583 new infections, compared to around 1.92 lakh recoveries.

The recovery rate, for the 12th consecutive day, also improved to reach 96.67 per cent, from the 96.16 of Thursday. The national rate is 93.6.
Between December 29 and January 16, it had dropped by nearly eight percentage points, before recovering by over six percentage points in these 12 days.

Nine of the state’s 23 districts reported zero deaths. Calcutta reported eight, North 24-Parganas reported nine. The mortality rate is 1.03 per cent now.

Bengal has over 19.86 lakh cases now, since the first was detected in the state in March, 2020. The total includes more than 19.2 lakh recoveries and 20,515 deaths.