Bengal on Saturday reported the most coronavirus deaths with 42, recoveries with 2,125, and tests with 15,628, completing a month of relentless spike in numbers with nearly 41,000 new cases and 726 deaths.

The silver lining in this period has been the over 25,000 recoveries and 3.5 lakh tests.

The number of new lab-tested cases logged in the past 24 hours till 9am on Saturday was 2,404.

Bengal now has 56,377 cases and 35,564 recoveries in all, and 19,391 active cases.

Calcutta alone reported 727 cases and 11 deaths on Saturday.

A minister pointed out that in the past week, Bengal had over 12,000 recoveries, compared to around 16,000 new cases.

The recovery rate is 63.24 per cent now, we will go past the national rate (63.9 per cent) in a matter of days,” the minister said.

The state’s total test count is over 7.89 lakh now, with 8,768 tests per million.

Owing to the sharp spike in new cases, the positive confirmation rate deteriorated drastically in a month, doubling from 3.56 to 7.14 per cent.

“In a month, the five districts (Calcutta, North and South 24-Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly) have added nearly 32,000 new cases, or 56 per cent of all Covid-19 cases reported in the state this pandemic,” said the minister.

The state government reported 1,135, or 85.2 per cent, as deaths with comorbidity “present”. Of the 726 deaths in a month’s time, 685 of them (over 94 per cent) were reported as comorbid. Bengal’s overall mortality rate improved to 2.36 in a month, from 3.87.