The West Bengal government has slashed the rate of an RT-PCR test by nearly half to Rs 500 from Rs 950, a senior health official said on Friday.

However, the additional charge of Rs 15 per km for home collection of samples remains unaltered, he said, adding that the new rate came into effect from January 27.

"The revised rate will be applicable also to all private laboratories. The cost of reagents has dropped drastically, hence we slashed the charge. An order to this effect has been passed," West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC) chairperson Justice (retired) Ashim Kumar Banerjee said.

The rate of an RT-PCR test in Delhi is Rs 300, while that in Mumbai is Rs 500.

West Bengal has tested 2,30,02,149 samples for COVID-19 till Thursday.

Bengal's COVID-19 tally rose to 19,82,862 on Thursday as 3,608 people tested positive for the infection, 1,361 less than the previous day, a health bulletin said.

Thirty-six more people succumbed to the infection, pushing the state's death toll to 20,481.

North 24 Parganas district recorded the highest number of new cases at 524, followed by 423 in Kolkata. Fourteen fatalities were reported in North 24 Parganas, followed by eight in Kolkata and four in South 24 Parganas.

The number of active cases dipped by 11,644 to 55,725. A total of 19,06,656 people have recovered from the disease so far, including 15,216 in the last 24 hours.

The recovery rate has improved to 96.16 per cent from 95.56 per cent on the previous day.

The positivity rate, however, rose to 9.02 per cent from 7.32 per cent on Wednesday as 40,019 samples were tested for COVID-19, taking the total number of such clinical examinations to 2,30,02,149.

A total of 64,739 doses of COVID vaccines were administered during the day.