Three Bengal MPs —Shanta Chhetri, a Trinamul Congress Rajya Sabha member, Sukanta Majumdar (Balurghat) and Jayanta Roy (Jalpaiguri), both of the BJP —tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday, the day before the start of the monsoon session of Parliament.
The state reported 3,215 novel coronavirus cases during a 24-hour period till 9am on Sunday.
While Majumdar and Roy tested positive for Covid in Delhi during examination of legislators’ swab samples ahead of the Parliament session’s beginning, Chhetri was diagnosed with the infection in Darjeeling. All the three have gone into physician-monitored self-isolation as none has major symptoms.
Sources in the BJP and Trinamul said thorough contact-tracing was being carried out to alert all those who had come in contact with the MPs. The sources said all the three were part of several meetings held over the past few days, each attended by dozens of others.
With the 3,215 new cases, the state’s total count went past 2 lakh — at 2,02,708 now, of which over 1.75 lakh are recoveries and 3,945 are deaths. In 24 hours till 9am, the state logged 3,054 recoveries and 58 deaths.
The recovery rate continued to rise and reached 86.4, far ahead of the national rate of 77.92 per cent.
Of the 58 fatalities, 12 were in Calcutta and 13 in North 24-Parganas.
As of Sunday, the state government reported 3,386 deaths (85.8 per cent) as those with comorbidity “present”.
Bengal’s overall mortality rate is now 1.94, still behind the national rate of 1.64 per cent.
The state logged a new high of 47,318 tests on Sunday, which took the total past 24.7 lakh, at 27,445 tests per million people.
Steady rise in testing, coupled with relatively lower cases being found, has improved the positive confirmation rate after August 23, from 8.9 to 8.21 per cent. A decreasing positive confirmation rate is indicative of reducing levels of Covid-19 spread.
The state reported 32.36 per cent occupancy on 12,675 Covid-19 beds at 92 hospitals.
Telemedicine services have been provided to over 2.04 lakh people, 4,205 of whom availed themselves of the facility in the past 24 hours.