Chief minister Mamata Banerjee asserted that Bengal’s Covid-19 mortality rate at 1.94 per cent would be lowered soon with measures being taken by her government, on a day 58 fresh deaths took the state’s total toll in the pandemic past 4,000.

The chief minister underscored that 85.8 per cent or 3,434 of 4,003 of the deaths were because of comorbidities.

“Those deaths (of people with comorbidities) are being added to the Covid-19 toll, because those people are more susceptible to the infection,” she said.

In Covid-19, comorbidities are underlying health disorders such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular or kidney ailments. Most pandemic deaths around the world have occurred when infected persons had comorbidities.

“When we said it (about co-morbidities causing most of the Covid-19 deaths) first, many mocked us. Now, all of India has accepted the truth in this,” said Mamata, who also holds Bengal’s health portfolio.

In Bengal, hypertension has taken around a fourth of lives of Covid-19 patients, followed by diabetes, which claimed around a fifth, and cardiac ailments, which claimed around one-tenth of the lives.

“Our mortality rate, 1.94 now, we brought it down from over 9… we will lower it further. If we have been able to bring it to less than 2 from over 9, we certainly will be able to get it to drop further,” Mamata said. The national mortality rate now is 1.64 per cent.

“We have been conducting thorough surveys...to keep monitoring those in need of treatment…. Intervention is underway,” she added.

Bengal on Monday reported 3,211 new cases and 3,084 recoveries. Bengal’s cases have gone past 2.05 lakh, including over 1.78 lakh recoveries and the 4,003 deaths. Its recovery rate is 86.55 per cent, far ahead of the national rate of 78.15.

Bengal logged a new high in daily testing with 47,537 on Monday, taking the total tests past 25 lakh, at 27,973 tests per million people.

Steady rise in tests coupled with relatively lower cases improved positive confirmation rate after August 23, from 8.9 to 8.18 per cent. “Our positive confirmation rate is far less than the national rate (8.5)…. It’s all in the right direction and I cannot thank all our Covid frontliners, especially those in healthcare, enough,” said Mamata.

Having begun testing in early February, Bengal took over three-and-a-half months to complete 1 lakh tests. Over the next four months, it conducted over 24 lakh more tests. In 14 days of September so far, Bengal logged 6.3 lakh tests.