Bengal on Friday logged 1,136 Covid-19 recoveries, 926 infections and 21 deaths, aiding a drop in its total of active cases for the 74th consecutive day since Vijaya Dashami on October 26.

In this period, the total of active cases has improved by nearly 78 per cent, from 37,190 to 8,245.

Bengal now has 3.7 per cent of the national total of active cases, down from over seven per cent in about a month.

“We had never even thought that holding this trend of turnaround for so long, for around 11 weeks, would be possible. Now that we have achieved it, I think it would not be audaciously ambitious to assume that we will be able to sustain this for a few more weeks, thereby undoing a few more months of damage,” said a Bengal minister.

The recovery rate has risen for 78 consecutive days, by over nine per cent, to 96.75. The national rate now is 96.38 per cent.

Since the end of Durga Puja, the state has reported over 2.3 lakh recoveries, outweighing the 2.05 lakh new infections detected.

The state’s positive confirmation rate is 7.58 per cent now, having improved steadily from the 8.27 of November 20.

“The continuous reduction in the positive confirmation rate is a huge plus, it shows the fewer new cases are not because fewer tests are being conducted. There are enough indications of the spread of Covid-19 shrinking in Bengal, largely because of the excellent pandemic management here,” said the minister.

Bengal’s total test count — including 36,135 tests on Friday — went past 73.72 lakh, at 81,913 tests per million people.

The state’s Covid-19 total of 5.59 lakh cases include 5.4 lakh recoveries and 9,902 deaths.

The 21 deaths reported on Friday included nine from Calcutta.

The state attributed 8,307 (83.9 per cent) of the total deaths count to comorbidities.

Bengal’s mortality rate is now 1.77, compared to the 1.44 per cent nationally.