Bengal on Sunday clocked 3,066 new Covid-19 cases and 51 deaths, but also did 32,286 tests to cross 13 lakh.

The state has speeded up Covid-19 tests, conducting a lakh in three days and 13,14,772 in all. Bengal also reported 2,935 recoveries on Sunday.

The total Covid count now is 1.16 lakh, including nearly 87,000 recoveries and 2,428 deaths. Bengal’s recovery rate is 74.48 per cent, higher than the national 72.41.

“Chief minister Mamata Banerjee set a target of 25,000 tests a day by August 15. We reached that long ago and did 34,214 tests on August 15,” said a minister. He added that active cases in Calcutta and North 24-Parganas continued to slide.

Of the 3,066 new cases reported on Sunday, 563 were from Calcutta, while 560 were from North 24-Parganas. However, since they reported 678 and 598 recoveries, respectively, their total of active cases fell.

“On Sunday, Calcutta had 7,041 active cases and North 24-Parganas had 5,774. Today, Calcutta has 6,517, while North 24-Parganas has 5,484.

All our measures for checking the outbreak in these two districts seem to have started paying off,” said the minister.

Bengal’s tests per million went up from 9,927 at the start of August to 14,609 on Sunday.

“Now, we are looking at crossing 40,000 daily tests in a matter of days,” the minister said. Testing in Bengal began in early February and the state took over three-and-a-half months to get past 1 lakh, on May 19.

“From there, we crossed 2 lakh in 12 days (on May 31), 3 lakh in 11 days (on June 11), 4 lakh in 10 days (on June 21), 5 lakh in 11 days (on July 2), 6 lakh in nine days (on July 11), 7 lakh in eight days (on July 19), 8 lakh in seven days (on July 26) and 9 lakh in six days (on August 1),” said the minister.

“After that, we crossed 10 lakh (on August 5), 11 lakh (on August 9) and 12 lakh (on Thursday) in four days each. Now, we crossed 13 lakh in just three days,” said the minister.

“At least another 5.2-6 lakh tests are likely in the second half of August. If we get there, we will have conducted 10 lakh tests in a month.”

Owing to the sharp spike in new cases, the positive confirmation rate is now 8.86 per cent, which was 7.86 at the beginning of the month.

Of the total 2,428 deaths reported, Calcutta alone accounted for 1,070, with 13 on Sunday 9am. North 24-Parganas reported a total of 565 deaths, 10 of them on Sunday.

The state government reported 2,153, or 88.7 per cent, as deaths with comorbidity “present”. In August alone, there have so far been 847 reported deaths of Covid-19 infected people, of which 785 were co-morbid, according to the government.

Bengal’s overall mortality rate improved to 2.08, but still lagged behind the national rate of 1.92 per cent. Calcutta’s mortality rate fell to 3.31.

The state reported 36.15 per cent occupancy in the 11,775 beds earmarked for Covid-19 in the 84 dedicated hospitals for the pandemic, beside 16.4 per cent in 11,507 beds of the 200 safe homes.

Telemedicine consultation for the pandemic was provided to over 82,000, including 4,120 in the past 24 hours.