The Bengal government on Thursday tried to soothe nerves over the spike in Covid-19 cases, asserting that it still had “full control” of the pandemic’s management and underscored certain “qualitative aspects” of the data to allay fears.

Hours before the daily Covid-19 bulletin from the state health department reported the highest 24-hour
rise in new cases at 2,954, chief secretary Rajiva Sinha had suggested at a news conference — attended by chief minister Mamata Banerjee — on Thursday that there was more to the statistics than meets the eye.

Sinha announced that the state had achieved on Thursday the target Mamata had set for August 15, that of taking the number of tests from around 10,000 a day to 25,000.

With Thursday’s 25,224 tests — the maximum intra-day test count — the total crossed 10.28 lakh, at 11,425 per million.

“Because we are testing a lot more, of course, we have been getting more cases. But our decision is firm, we will keep ramping up testing, tracing and tracking… irrespective of what some other states might be doing. Because there is a lot more testing, there are more cases being found,” said Mamata.

Sinha pointed out that out of the total Covid-19 cases of nearly 87,000, only around 24,000 were active cases and there were over 61,000 recoveries.

“Of them (the active cases), as of 9am, 1,144 patients were critical, 1,043 patients moderate, 1,946 mildly symptomatic…. Each patient in Bengal, we have every status update,” said the chief secretary.

“We issue all key statistics in our daily Covid-19 bulletins, but some qualitative aspects are not adequately reflected, sometimes, in them. Therefore, some points I would really like to assert here…. The targets, by way of capacity augmentation and necessary intervention, that we have been setting, we have been achieving,” said Sinha.

“The entire Covid management, even now… is under full control of the state government and the associated partners.”

Sinha said the recovery rate of the state was now 70.34 per cent. On Thursday, till 9am, the state reported 2,061 more recoveries in 24 hours.

With 56 deaths being reported on Thursday, the toll from Covid-19 rose to 1,902. But Sinha offered further insight.

“The mortality rate is 2.2 per cent. So, barely two out of every hundred Covid-19 patients have died. Of those two, 87.8 per cent (1,670 of the total) were comorbid,” he said.

“Covid-19 on its own is not that dangerous, only if there are comorbidities, it is a deadly combination….

Many deaths have been because of delayed hospitalisation, because they thought they would be okay for three more days, but deteriorated drastically in three hours,” he added.

Sinha also asserted that the state had bettered by 60 its target to augment the number of dedicated Covid-19 beds by 500 by July 31, taking the total bed count to 11,560.

“Occupancy, over the past 10 days, we have kept around 39 per cent. That means over 60 per cent beds remain available. No dearth of beds, even in high-load districts,” he said.

Mamata advised the administration to have a survey conducted and a helpline set up for police to come to the aid of senior citizens living alone, especially at urban centres.

The chief minister said she had found out on Wednesday that one of her neighbours was ill and needed hospitalisation.

“He is very senior. Both his daughters are professors. One of them came to visit him yesterday, and then everybody came to know he had been with fever for three days, living alone…. The Kalighat police station hospitalised him immediately,” she said.

“He could have died like that, then it would have been said that nobody looked out for him…. It got me thinking. Something must be done specifically for such elderly,” added Mamata.