30-day dip in active Covid cases- Bengal has total Covid-19 cases of 4.67 lakh, over 4.34 lakh recoveries and 8,172 deaths

State recorded around 1.24 lakh recoveries, outweighing the 1.13 lakh cases found in the one-month window

Bengal’s total of Covid-19 cases is nearly 4.67 lakh now, including over 4.34 lakh recoveries and 8,172 deaths.: Shutterstock

Meghdeep Bhattacharyya   |   Calcutta   |    26.11.20  :  Bengal on Wednesday reported a fall in its total active Covid cases for 30 consecutive days since Vijaya Dashami on October 26.

In these 30 days, the state recorded around 1.24 lakh recoveries, outweighing the 1.13 lakh cases found. On Wednesday, the state reported 3,605 recoveries, 3,528 new infections and 51 deaths, 15 of which were from Calcutta. Active cases dropped from 37,190 on Dashami to 24,752 on Wednesday.

On Tuesday night, leader of the Opposition Abdul Mannan, 68, was hospitalised on testing positive for Covid-19. He showed signs of lung infection. Those he came in contact with, including governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, have been alerted. 

The Congress veteran and Champdani MLA has several comorbidities.

“Mannanda has not been keeping well for some time and has been in and out of the hospital in recent years. That is why we wanted to take no chances. A CT scan revealed he developed a lung infection. But he is stable right now,” said a party colleague.

Mannan tested positive three days after Trinamul’s Singur MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya, who had developed a chest infection.

The Champdani and Singur MLAs are the latest addition to over 40 sitting members of the Bengal Assembly to test positive for the virus. Over half of them are from the ruling party.

Prior to this, 11 members of the 44-member state cabinet tested positive, including Gautam Deb, Nirmal Maji, Rabindra Nath Ghosh, Tapas Roy, Manturam Pakhira, Suvendu Adhikari, Binay Barman, Jyotipriya Mullick, Sujit Bose, Swapan Debnath, and Soumen Mahapatra.

The virus also infected at least six MPs from Bengal — the Congress’s Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury, BJP’s Dilip Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee, Sukanta Majumdar and Jayanta Roy, and Trinamul’s Rajya Sabha member Shanta Chhetri.

Covid-19 also claimed the lives of CPM veteran Shyamal Chakraborty, Trinamul’s MLAs Samaresh Das, Tamonash Ghosh and Gurupada Mete.

Bengal’s total of Covid-19 cases is nearly 4.67 lakh now, including over 4.34 lakh recoveries and 8,172 deaths.

The state’s recovery rate has been on the rise for 34 consecutive days, reaching 92.95 per cent on Wednesday, close to the national rate of 93.69 per cent. Bengal’s mortality rate is now 1.74, compared to the national rate of 1.46.

Of the total toll, 6,833 or 83.6 per cent, were reported comorbid deaths.

With 44,631 tests on Wednesday, the state’s total test count went past 56.54 lakh, at 62,828 tests per million people. The positive confirmation rate is 8.26 per cent.