Of the new cases reported, 431 were from districts with a high volume of returnees, Calcutta alone reported 117
Meghdeep Bhattacharyya:West Bengal, with 9,522 Covid-19 tests in 24 hours on Thursday, went past the 3 lakh tests mark with 306,941 tests.
This milestone comes 11 days after tests in Bengal crossed the 2 lakh mark and 23 days after the 1 lakh mark.
The state reported 440 new cases, taking the total cases to 9,768, but the recovery rate improved with the discharge, following cure, of 209 infected persons. As of now, the total number of recoveries are 3,988 and total active cases 5,338.
Bengal also reported 10 more deaths, which took the total Covid-19 toll to 442. Of them, the state government reported 297 or 67.2 per cent as deaths with comorbidity “present”. Calcutta so far has reported the most deaths, 279.
Though the positive confirmation rate — the percentage of people found infected among those tested — worsened from 2.84 per cent a week ago to 3.18 per cent, it is better than the 4.13 per cent a month ago. A decreasing positive confirmation rate indicates lower levels of Covid-19 spread.
The recovery rate, now at 40.82 per cent, was only 28.16 a month ago. The total number of cases was 2,173 a month ago. The recoveries then were 612.
“Our goal is to soon see a day when the number of total recoveries is higher than the active cases,” said a minister.
The state conducts 3,410 tests per million, which was 585 a month ago. “We expect to get past 4 lakh by June 20 and 5 lakh by June-end,” the minister said.
Of the new cases reported in 24 hours, till Thursday 9am, 431 (around 98 per cent) were from districts with a high volume of returnees. Calcutta alone reported 117.
Migrant workers and others stranded elsewhere in the country during previous stages of the lockdown started returning to the state in lakhs over the past month. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her government have repeatedly attributed the spike in Covid-19 cases to infection in many of the returnees from high incidence states.
Currently, there are over 1.18 lakh returnees in 11,385 quarantine centres earmarked for Shramik Special trains. In the other 582 state-run centres, 18,671 people are in quarantine. Another 1.56 lakh are in home quarantine.
“There are 2.93 lakh in quarantine, but another 3.05 lakh, including some 1.15 lakh returnees, have successfully completed quarantine…. This situation will normalise within this month,” said the minister.telegraphindia
