A division bench of Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the state government to file an affidavit by September 30, stating the actual demand for Covid-19 vaccines in Bengal’s rural areas and the quantity the government sent to those places.

The bench, headed by Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal, was hearing a public interest litigation alleging people in urban areas were getting jabs but not those in remote areas.

A state panel lawyer told the court that people were getting vaccines in both urban and rural areas and at present, there was no vaccine scarcity.

On Thursday, Bengal administered over 3.91 lakh doses out of 2,436 vaccination centres (2,123 run by the government), taking the number of doses administered to nearly 4.89 crore, around 48.9 per cent of Bengal’s population. Of them, over 1.41 crore are second doses, with those fully vaccinated forming around 14.1 per cent of Bengal’s population. The corresponding figures for India stand at 43.4 per cent of the population with at least one dose and around 14 per cent with both doses.

Of the districts, Calcutta leads the pack, with over 65 lakh doses administered in all, followed by North 24-Parganas at more than 50 lakh doses. Hooghly is third, with more than 28 lakh doses. At the bottom of the pile are districts Alipurduar, Jhargram and Kalimpong.

Adverse events following the immunisation were reported in 0.008 per cent of the cases in Bengal.

707 new infections

Bengal on Thursday recorded 707 Covid cases, 725 recoveries and seven deaths.

Active cases in all dropped by 25 to 8,025 now, with 88 successive days of a fall.

Calcutta logged 129 new infections and North 24-Parganas 125, the only two among the state’s 23 districts with a three-digit figure of new infections detected in a day. Seven districts reported a single-digit figure.

Seventeen Bengal districts reported zero deaths on Thursday. Calcutta and North 24-Parganas reported one death each.

The state’s recovery rate is 98.29 per cent, its highest in this pandemic and ahead of the national rate of 97.63. Its mortality rate is 1.19, while that of the nation is 1.33 per cent.

Bengal’s daily positive confirmation rate, which was nearly 33 per cent at the peak of the second wave, was 1.78 per cent on Thursday.

The state currently has over 15.59 lakh Covid-19 cases since the first was reported in March 2020. The total includes nearly 15.33 lakh recoveries and 18,620 deaths.