Bengal on Friday recorded its highest intra-day Covid-19 tests at 10,321, surpassing the previous record of 9,786 on June 7 and taking the total count to 3,80,612 with 4,229 tests per million.
A month ago, the state was testing around 8,700 samples a day, with the total count at 1.11 lakh and 1,233 tests per million.
“We hope to get past 4 lakh tests by Monday. On May 19, we had 1 lakh tests. Four times of that in a month’s time,” said a Bengal minister.
However, the positive confirmation rate — the percentage of people found infected among those tested — deteriorated from 2.80 a month ago to 3.44 per cent because of a considerable rise in new cases.
After five consecutive days of drop in total active Covid-19 cases, the state reported a rise on Friday. With 355 new cases in 24 hours till 9am, the total number of active patients were 5,258 on Friday.
The total Covid-19 cases went past 13,000. A month ago, there were 3,103 cases in total.
The state on Friday recorded 11 Covid-19 deaths, which took the toll to 529. The state government reported 379 deaths — 71.6 per cent — as those with comorbidity “present”. Calcutta reported the most deaths, at 322.
While the overall mortality rate stood at 4 per cent, that of the city was 7.3.
Bengal reported 302 recoveries on Friday, taking the total number of cured patients to 7,303. Around 38 per cent — 2,762 — of Bengal’s total recoveries was reported in six days since Sunday.
The recovery rate was 36.6 a month ago. On Friday, it was 55.79 per cent. “The recovery rate, a vital parameter in the pandemic, should go past the 70 per cent mark in another fortnight,” said the minister.
A month ago, Bengal had 1,136 recoveries in total.
Of the 355 new Covid-19 cases, most — over 95 per cent — were reported from districts experiencing a high volume of returns of migrant workers and others stranded elsewhere in the country during the initial stages of the lockdown. Calcutta alone reported 131.
Over 4.26 lakh people successfully completed quarantine, including around 1.84 lakh Shramik Special returnees.