Calcutta alone reported 374 new cases, while North 24-Parganas and Howrah recorded 328 and 130 cases, respectively
Meghdeep Bhattacharyya: West Bengal reported 1,198 fresh coronavirus cases on Friday, setting a 24-hour record on the count for the third consecutive day and taking total number of patients to 27,109.
The previous record in the highest number of cases was 1,088 on Thursday. The state also logged 26 deaths from Covid-19 on Friday.
There has been an alarming rise in new cases since June 26, which apparently accelerated from June 29. It prompted the Mamata Banerjee government to reintroduce the stricter lockdown for seven days from 5pm on Thursday in some pockets of urban and semi-urban centres.
“On Wednesday, 986. On Thursday, 1,088. On Friday, 1,198. Three consecutive days of record-breaking rise in new cases. This is by far the worst week in the pandemic,” said a source in the government.
“In 12 days since June 29, the state recorded 9,826 cases and 241 deaths. The total active cases now are 8,881, up by 3,430 in the past 12 days. The only real positive? The 6,155 recoveries in this period,” said the source.
On Friday, there were 522 new recoveries, taking the total past 17,000 to 17,348. “The total active cases (8,881) is about half the total recoveries. That is good news,” the source said.
The recovery rate — which had nearly passed the 67 per cent mark — fell over the past few days to 63.99 now. It was 40.51 a month ago. The national recovery rate is 62.56.
Of the new cases, over 96 per cent were from districts that experienced a high volume of returns of migrant workers and others stranded elsewhere in the country during the initial stages of the lockdown. Calcutta alone reported 374 new cases, while North 24-Parganas recorded 328.
Howrah reported 130 cases and South 24-Parganas 104.
“Areas with high population density in and around Calcutta have been responsible for almost the entire spike,” said the source.
Of the total 880 deaths reported, Calcutta accounted for 470. Thirteen of the 470 died in 24 hours till 9am on Friday.
North 24-Parganas reported a total of 156 deaths, six of them on Friday. Howrah reported 121, four of them till 9am.
Out of the 880, the state government reported 706 or 80.2 per cent as deaths with comorbidity “present”.
Over 6.79 lakh people successfully completed quarantine and they include over 2.65 lakh Shramik Special returnees. Barely 48,000 now remain in quarantine.
While Bengal’s overall mortality rate stood at 3.24 per cent, that of Calcutta was 5.37. The national rate now is 2.7 per cent.
The state’s total test count is now 5,93,967, with 6,600 tests per million. On Friday, 10,639 tests were reported.
“We will go past the landmark of 6 lakh tests on Saturday, nine days after 5 lakh. On May 19, we had just 1 lakh tests,” said the source.
Owing to the considerable rise in new cases, the positive confirmation rate — the percentage of people found infected among those tested — deteriorated from 3.14 a month ago to 4.56 per cent.
Of the 10,830 Covid-19 beds at 80 dedicated hospitals in the state, 27.02 per cent are occupied.
