The number of new Covid cases every day has been varying between 800 and 1,000 over the past 15 days, a trend that has triggered concern among state government officials and public health experts.
Several private hospitals said the rate of positivity for Covid tests and the number of patients admitted had almost remained the same over the past fortnight.
According to the state health department data, Bengal recorded 885 new Covid cases on July 5. On July 18, the count was 801. In between, it hovered between 800 and 1,000.
“At the peak of the second wave, the number of daily new cases in the state had gone up to around 20,000. From there it has dropped below 1,000. We were expecting it to drop even further by now,” said a senior official of the state health department.
The main cause of concern, the official said, was that many people were dropping their guard after the government started relaxing the Covid restrictions.
“More mingling of people without safety protocols means increased chances of transmission and that can lead to mutation of the virus. We are keeping a vigil on the situation,” said the official.
The health department, he said, is regularly sending samples of Covid patients to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics to find out whether any new variant has emerged.
“On Monday, the Delta variant, which drove the second wave in large parts of the country, was found in all the samples tested,” the official said.
Private hospitals said the number of Covid patients admitted, after a sharp drop, has remained almost the same for the last 15 days.
Peerless Hospital had 175 Covid beds in May. All of them were occupied on most days of the month.
Now, the hospital has only 40 beds. On Monday, eight patients were admitted.
“Since the beginning of July, two to three patients have been getting admitted daily. The rate of positivity (percentage of the samples tested positive) is not dropping below 5 per cent,” said Sudipta Mitra, the chief executive of Peerless Hospital.
The RN Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences had cent percent occupancy in its Covid ward comprising 260 beds in May.
“The number of patients had been falling drastically till 20 days back and we brought down the bed count to 25.
But since the beginning of July, the number of admitted patients has remained steady at 17 or 18,” said R. Venkatesh, regional director, east, Narayana Health, which runs the Mukundapur hospital.
The test positivity rate at the hospital, which had shot up to 60 per cent, is varying between 2 and 3 per cent.
At Belle Vue Clinic, too, the test positivity rate has been around 2 per cent over the last fortnight. The hospital is testing around 35 samples daily, said CEO Pradip Tondon.
Doctors said a more aggressive vaccination drive, along with maintaining personal safety, was the only way to ensure a further drop in the number of cases.
“Even if the virus mutates, transmission can be kept under control if safety protocols are followed. If vaccination is not scaled up and people violate Covid protocols, a third wave will come,” said Chandramouli Bhattacharya, a consultant in tropical medicine and infectious diseases.
Fliers’ protocol
The state government on Monday announced that fliers arriving from outside the state would be required to be fully vaccinated or carry an RT-PCR negative report. The test has to be conducted within 72 hours before the flight departure.
