Bengal on Thursday went past 10,000 recoveries and witnessed the ninth drop in total active Covid-19 cases in the past 12 days.

The number of total patients fell by 841 in the 12-day period and reached 4,852 as the recovery rate went past 65 per cent.

The state’s total recoveries are now 10,190, 488 of which were in 24 hours till 9am on Thursday. The recovery rate is 65.12, which is far ahead of the national rate of 57.57 per cent.

“In the 12-day period after June 13, Bengal has had 5,648 recoveries, over 55 per cent of the total recoveries. The total number of recoveries have been consistently ahead of the count of active cases for days now. The recovery rate is likely to cross the 75 per cent milestone in less than a fortnight,” said a minister.

A month ago, the state had total recoveries of 1,486 and the rate stood at 37.06 per cent.

The state’s Covid-19 death toll rose by 15 to cross 600 on Thursday. Of the 606 deaths, Calcutta alone accounted for 351. Of the total deaths, the state government reported 450 — 74.26 per cent — as those with comorbidity “present”.

Bengal also logged 475 new Covid-19 cases on Thursday.

The state reported 9,492 tests in 24 hours, taking the total test count to 4,39,258, with 4,881 tests per million.

“By Tuesday or Wednesday, we will get past the landmark of 5 lakh tests. We went past 1 lakh on May 19. We have covered a lot of ground, very quickly since then,” said the minister.

While Bengal’s overall mortality rate stood at 3.87 per cent, that of the city was 6.83. The national rate now is 3.11 per cent.

Of the 475 new Covid-19 cases reported on Thursday, most — around 94 per cent — were from districts which received a large number of migrant workers and others stranded elsewhere in the country during the initial stages of the lockdown. Calcutta alone reported 163.

“Now, one of our priorities is to get the state’s mortality rate down to less than 3 per cent. We should be able to achieve that in another couple of weeks, if the current trends hold,” said the minister.

Owing to the considerable rise in new cases, the positive confirmation rate — the percentage of people found infected among those tested — deteriorated from 2.55 a month ago to 3.56 per cent.

Over 5.22 lakh people have successfully completed quarantine and they include nearly 2.26 lakh Shramik Special returnees. Barely 1.4 lakh people remain in quarantine now and are expected to complete the process by the end of the month.