3,865 new cases, recovery rate dips

 The renewed surge in cases has caused the positive confirmation rate to rise again, over the past week or so, to 8.03% now

Meghdeep Bhattacharyya   |   TT  |   Calcutta   |   18.10.20  :  Bengal on Saturday logged 3,865 new Covid-19 cases, which took the total cases past 3.17 lakh, dragging the recovery rate further down to 87.66 per cent.

This happens to be the 14th day so far in October when the figure for the highest jump in Covid-19 cases in the 24-hour window was reset.

On Saturday, Bengal reported 61 deaths, with 15 each from Calcutta and North 24-Parganas, and 3,183 cures.

Bengal’s recovery rate, which reached a high of 87.98 per cent on October 6, dropped to 87.66 on Saturday. The national recovery rate, which till recently was far behind that of Bengal, overtook it with 87.98.

“This has been an alarming spell of relentless rise. None of our interventions paid off yet. The Puja is already here. We can only pray that this does not turn into a full-fledged public health emergency over the next couple of weeks,” said a minister.

Bengal’s 3.17 lakh total cases include nearly 2.78 lakh recoveries and 5,992 deaths.

On Friday, BJP state unit chief Dilip Ghosh and Midnapore MP tested positive. Before him, five MPs — Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury, Locket Chatterjee, Sukanta Majumdar, Jayanta Roy and Shanta Chhetri — had tested positive.

Over 30 members of the Bengal Assembly, half of from the ruling party, have been infected since the onset of the pandemic, including nine members of the Mamata Banerjee cabinet. They are Rabindra Nath Ghosh, Tapas Roy, Manturam Pakhira, Suvendu Adhikari, Binay Barman, Jyotipriya Mullick, Sujit Bose, Swapan Debnath and Soumen Mahapatra.

The virus also claimed the lives of CPM veteran Shyamal Chakraborty, besides Trinamul MLAs Samaresh Das, Tamonash Ghosh and Gurupada Mete.

With 43,428 tests, the total tests went past 39.47 lakh, at 43,864 tests per million people.

The renewed surge in cases has caused the positive confirmation rate to rise again, over the past week or so, to 8.03 per cent now.

Of the total 5,931 deaths reported, Calcutta alone accounted for 1,971, with 15 till 9am. North 24-Parganas reported a total of 1,357 deaths, 15 of them on Saturday.

The state government reported 5,072, or 84.6 per cent of deaths with comorbidity “present”.

Bengal’s overall mortality rate is 1.88, substantially behind the national rate of 1.51 per cent.

The state reported 37.82 per cent occupancy in the 12,751 beds earmarked for Covid-19 in the 93 dedicated hospitals for the pandemic, besides 3.43 lakh telemedicine consultations for the pandemic.