Bengal on Saturday logged 341 recoveries, 310 new infections and nine deaths, including two from Calcutta. Its total active Covid-19 cases slid for 96 days on the trot from 37,190 on Vijaya Dashami, October 26, to 5,671 on Saturday.

Bengal’s recovery rate rose is now 97.22 per cent, ahead of the national average of 96.97. Its mortality rate, however, is 1.78 while the national average is 1.43 per cent.

A minister highlighted the falling occupancy of Covid patients in hospitals as proof of improvement.

“A look at the hospitalisation (of Covid-19 patients) data on December 30 and today (January 30) is evidence enough of the overall improvement overall in the past month alone,” he said, referring to the 11.92 per cent occupancy in 13,588 Covid-19 beds across 102 hospitals on December 30, and 5.83 per cent occupancy in 8,727 beds across 69 hospitals on Saturday.

“That we have been able to de-requisition 4,861 and 33 hospitals in just a month tells you how decisive this turnaround has been.”

The 200 state-run safe homes had, with 11,507 beds between them, had 1,012 people on October 26 and 99 on December 30. On Saturday, there were 15 people in safe homes.

The state’s positive confirmation rate is 7.15 per cent now, having improved steadily from the 8.27, 71 days ago.

On Saturday, the state reported 26,107 tests, taking the total past 79.7 lakh, at 88,565 tests per million people.

The state’s total of Covid-19 cases is nearly 5.8 lakh now, including around 5.54 lakh recoveries and 10,164 deaths.

Calcutta High Court had intervened to prevent a worsening of the pandemic over Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Diwali and Chhath. A similar set of instructions came from the high court, to ensure the outbreak does not worsen over the New Year celebrations. The numbers of infections from the festivals between October and January has shown that the court’s instructions were effective.

The state attributed 8,535 deaths or 84 per cent of the total toll to comorbidities.