Bengal on Monday reported 271 new Covid-19 cases, 269 of which were recorded in districts which have been experiencing a high volume of return of workers and others who were stranded elsewhere in the country during the lockdown.

Of the 271 reported in 24 hours, 78 were in Howrah, 54 in Calcutta, 30 in Birbhum, 19 in Cooch Behar and 18 in North 24-Parganas.

Till May 8, after which the influx began in huge volumes, the state had a total 1,678 cases. That number stood at 5,772 at 9am on Monday. Calcutta alone recorded a rise of 1,333 cases since May 8.

“On May 8, the state had 1,678 total cases. In the past week alone, the state saw 1,956 new cases, well over 90 per cent of which were reported from districts with the most returnees,” said a Bengal minister.

With the surge in the number of patients, the positive confirmation rate — the percentage of people found infected among those tested — deteriorated further from 2.58 a week ago to 2.71 per cent. An increasing positive confirmation rate is indicative of higher levels of Covid-19 spread.

The number of deaths directly from the pathogen touched 253 with eight more fatalities in the past 24 hours.

As of Monday, there were 17,037 people at quarantine centres and 1,44,678 in home quarantine.

“On May 8, there were 4,964 people in institutional quarantine and 9,576 people in home quarantine. The home quarantine number alone rose by over 15 times,” the minister said. Bengal on Monday reported the release of 149 more Covid-19 patients from hospitals following cure, taking the total number of recovery cases to 2,306. The recovery rate now is 39.95 per cent and it stood at 37.05 a week ago.

The state government also reported 2,369 tests per million people, which was 1,645 a week ago.

“We reported 9,480 tests — the highest intra-day test count — on Monday. Daily testing is all set to cross the 10,000 mark now. We will zoom past the 3, 4 and 5 lakh tests mark within this month,” the minister said.

The state has distributed to its hospitals 10.85 lakh personal protective equipment sets, 5.32 lakh N95 or FFP2 masks, 29.73 lakh regular masks, 1.65 lakh litres of hand sanitiser and 20.15 lakh gloves.