Covid-19 recoveries jump by 16% in a week - Of the new 441 cases, over 93% came from districts with returnees; 127 were in Calcutta alone

Meghdeep Bhattacharyya, TT, 21.06.20, Calcutta: Bengal on Saturday reported yet another drop in the total active Covid-19 cases for the sixth time in seven days, bringing the number to 5,126 from 5,693 on June 13.

Also, 3,323 recoveries in seven days helped offset the impact of 2,833 new infections found during the same period.

The state’s total recoveries, with 562 more reported on Saturday, now stands at 7,865.

The recovery rate of 58.12 per cent is an improvement of 16 per cent since June 13.

“Over 41 per cent of Bengal’s recoveries has taken place over the past seven days,” said a minister.

But the state reported 441 new Covid-19 cases and 11 more Covid-19 fatalities. With these 11 deaths, Bengal’s pandemic toll reached 540. The state government reported 390 or 72.2 per cent as deaths with comorbidity “present”. Calcutta reported the most deaths at 323. Bengal’s overall mortality rate was 3.99 per cent, but Calcutta’s was higher at 7.13.

Of the new 441 cases, over 93 per cent came from districts with a high volume of returnees, 127 from Calcutta alone.

But in another positive, Bengal on Saturday reported the most Covid-19 tests in 24 hours, 10,330, taking the total test count to 3,90,942, with 4,344 tests per million.

If the total does go past 4 lakh on Sunday, the state will have conducted 3 lakh tests in a month. “We should go past 5 lakh tests by June-end,” said the minister.

A month ago, the state was testing around 4,200 samples a day, with 1,280 tests per million.

Owing to the considerable rise in new cases, the positive confirmation rate – the percentage of people found infected among those tested – deteriorated from 2.77 a month ago to 3.46 per cent.

Over 4.41 lakh people successfully completed quarantine, including around 1.91 lakh Shramik Special returnees. There remain 63,501 returnees in 7,482 quarantine centres earmarked for the trains. In the other 582 state-run centres, 9,123 people are in quarantine while another 1.36 lakh are in home quarantine.

“The last of the returnees will have successfully completed quarantine by June-end and we will have an even better recovery rate as the number of new cases keeps falling,” said the minister.