Bengal on Saturday pulled off yet another impressive Covid-19 testing performance, with 45,781 tests, which took the state past 21 lakh.
In 24 hours till Saturday 9am, Bengal also logged 3,042 new infections, 3,248 recoveries and 58 deaths. Eighteen of the deaths were reported from Calcutta.
With this, total cases now number over 1.77 lakh, of which recoveries are nearly 1.51 lakh. The total number of deaths, since the onset of the pandemic, is 3,510 now.
For 13 consecutive days, Bengal has reported a fall in its total of active cases, with more recoveries than new cases found in the 24-hour window. The total number of active cases on August 23 was 28,069, and on Saturday, it stood at 23,390.
Bengal’s recovery rate, therefore, is 84.86 per cent, much higher than the national rate of 77.3.
“While keeping recoveries high, we want to lower new cases and deaths, prioritising that over the next few weeks,” said a minister.
Having begun testing in early February, it took Bengal six months to get to 10 lakh tests, on August 5. Exactly a month later, the state has performed 21,12,185 tests in all.
The tests per million is now 23,469, which was 11,145 even a month ago. Daily testing has nearly doubled in that period, from 24,047 to 45,781.
“In just these five days of September, we conducted 2.25 lakh tests. By the end of the month, we will have achieved 15 lakh, at least. In August, we conducted 10.18 lakh tests,” said the minister.
From early February, Bengal took over three-and-a-half months to conduct 1 lakh tests, on May 19. Over the next 109 days, it conducted over 20 lakh tests. With the surge in testing, and the relatively less new cases found over the past 13 days, the positive confirmation rate improved from 8.9 to 8.41 per cent.
Of the total deaths, 3,033 or 86.4 per cent were reported comorbid by the state government. The overall mortality rate stayed at 1.97 per cent while the national rate is 1.72 per cent.