Bengal on Monday reported 1,910 new Covid-19 infections, including 179 from Calcutta.

In 24 hours till 9am on Monday, the state also logged 7,727 recoveries and 36 deaths, including five from Calcutta, resulting in a drop in active cases by 5,853 to 25,709.

This was 15 consecutive days of such a drop in the third wave, a decrease by 84 per cent in the total of active cases since January 17. Prior to this turnaround, the active caseload had gone up nearly 22 times from the 7,457 of December 28 last year to 1.6 lakh on January 16.

Although the new infections are fewer than that of Sunday (statewide total 3,427, including 521 in Calcutta), the state did only 34,817 tests on Sunday in keeping with the larger trend on Sundays that the Monday bulletin reports.

The positive confirmation rate — the percentage of samples testing positive for Covid-19 — was 5.49 per cent, compared to 6 on Sunday. On January 10, the positive confirmation rate had reached an all-time high for the state at 37.32.

Bengal’s recovery rate also improved for the 15th day on the trot to reach 97.68 per cent, from the 97.38 of Sunday. The national rate is 94.37. Between December 29 and January 16, it dropped by nearly 8 percentage points, before recovering by over 7 percentage points in these 15 days.

Eleven of the state’s 23 districts reported zero deaths. Bengal's mortality rate is 1.03 per cent now.

Sunday was the 34th day since the escalation of the third wave in Bengal, evident from the Covid-19 stats since December 29 last year.

In these 34 days, the state has logged around 3.64 lakh new infections (including 2 lakh from Calcutta). The state also logged 3.45 lakh recoveries and 886 casualties.

However, since January 17, the state reported 97,817 new infections, compared to over 2.31 lakh recoveries.

Bengal has over 19.95 lakh cases now, since the first was detected in the state in March, 2020. The total includes more than 19.49 lakh recoveries and 20,619 deaths.