Bengal on Saturday went past 43,000 Covid-19 tests, with 20,000 tests per million people, surpassing 18 lakh tests since the onset of the pandemic of which half were done in August.
With 3,312 recoveries in the 24-hour window till 9am Saturday outweighing the 3,012 new cases, the total number of active cases fell for the sixth consecutive day. Active cases on Saturday stood at 25,996, lower than 28,069 last Sunday.
The Covid toll was 53 on Saturday, of which Calcutta reported 12. Of the 3,126 deaths in all, 2,720 (87 per cent) were reported comorbid by the government. Bengal’s mortality rate stayed at 1.99, the national rate being 1.79 per cent.
But the total number of recoveries touched 1.28 lakh of the total 1.56 lakh cases, and the state’s recovery rate rose to 81.42 per cent, the national rate being 76.58 per cent now.
Five high-incidence districts — Calcutta, North and South 24-Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly — collectively recorded a fall of 702 in total of active cases by logging more recoveries than new cases.
“The most high-incidence district Calcutta had 7,041 active cases on August 9. On Saturday, with 560 recoveries and 470 new cases, active cases are 5,032,” said the minister.
Bengal reported 43,232 tests on Saturday, over twice the daily level of 19,000 at which it began the month. It more than doubled the tests per million, from 9,927 to 20,022 in that same span. “In seven days, we conducted 2.78 lakh tests,” said a minister. “The World Health Organisation advisory specifies a daily minimum of 140 tests per million. We are at 481.”
With more tests and relatively fewer new cases over the past few days, positive confirmation rate improved from 8.9 on August 22 to 8.7 on Saturday.
Food row at safe home
Six women, who tested Covid positive over the past couple of days and are lodged at a safe home in Birbhum’s Mohammedbazar, on Saturday morning circulated a video accusing the local administration of giving them bad food.
One of the women, who is an employee at an ICDS centre in Mohammedbazar, said the supply of food at the safe home was irregular and of inferior quality. The women accused the employees at the centre of threatening them after the video made by them surfaced on social media platforms.
The block development officer and officer in-charge of the safe home personally listened to the complaints after the video started doing the rounds.
The officials assured them of food on time, a patient said.
“Those women who had been shifted to the safe home a day ago levelled allegations regarding supply of food. We visited the safe home and assured them that their demands would be met. We distributed fruits to the patients with the help of the police,” said Mohammedbazar BDO Asish Mondal. He added that the allegations of the women were not exactly true but did not elaborate.
A senior official said all patients at the safe home were asymptomatic and had been given food in plastic packets. “This (serving food in plastic packets) they did not like and used the video to draw the attention of officials,” he said.
Additional reporting by Snehamoy Chakraborty