15 more deaths reported in Bengal .... The total number of cured patients, which had been 139 till Thursday, stands at 199 now

Meghdeep Bhattacharyya, TT, 3.05.20, Calcutta: The Mamata Banerjee government late on Saturday evening released Covid-19 figures for the past two days, stating that the number of new cases had gone up by 127 while 60 people had been discharged.

The number of Covid-19 deaths has gone up by 15 since Thursday.

The government had not issued any updates on Friday, the first time since April 6 that it had done so.

The government did not hold any news conference on Friday and Saturday. When the update on Thursday had been issued, Bengal had 572 active Covid-19 patients and 33 deaths directly from the pathogen. There were 72 other deaths from co-morbidities of persons who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Numbers released in the form of a health department bulletin — in a changed format, without details such as totals of active positive cases or deaths — for Friday and Saturday did not specify whether the 15 new deaths were directly from Covid-19 or the number included deaths from co-morbidities.

The total number of cured patients, which had been 139 till Thursday, stands at 199 now.

Sources in the government attributed the change in approach to a “knee-jerk reaction” after the BJP and governor Jagdeep Dhankhar pointed to discrepancies in the figures issued by chief secretary Rajiva Sinha at Thursday’s news conference and those mentioned in a letter to the Centre by state health secretary Vivek Kumar the same day.

Saturday’s bulletin mentioned that the state had conducted 4,451 tests over the past two days, taking the total to 20,976. The tests per million population has gone up from 126 on Wednesday to 232 on Saturday.