There were 427 new cases of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in West Bengal on Friday. This has been a week of huge increase in the number of cases, with over 300 cases on an average every day for the past few days. The total number of positive cases in Bengal has gone up to 7,303.
There were 386 new cases on June 4, on June 3 the number of new cases was 340, on June 2, there were 396 cases, and there were 271 new cases on June 1. The number of new cases on May 31 was 371, on May 30 it was 317, on May 29 it was 277, on May 28 it was 344, on May 27 it was 183, on May 26 it was 193.
Senior officials in Bengal and political leaders from the ruling party have been stating that this huge increase within a week is an indication of the large number of people who are coming in from other states that have high number of COVID-19 cases.
Earlier on Friday, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that the number of cases in the state has gone up due to the coming in of so many people from outside – especially from states that had a high number of COVID-19 cases. “Trains, buses are coming, and international flights are coming in too,” she said.
Officials pointed out that the Bengal government had wanted that the trains bringing in people from other states to be sent gradually instead of several trains at the same time. “Due to the cyclone Amphan, a lot of manpower and infrastructure had to be used in rehabilitation work and the state was not prepared to handle the pressure of so many trains coming together,” the official said.
People coming in from other states are being taken to state-run quarantine facilities and for tests. Those testing negative are being sent home for spending 14 days of home quarantine. Those testing positive are being sent to hospitals.
According to the officials, this requires stern and lengthy monitoring procedure and thus the Bengal government wanted the entire process to be slowed down.
Meanwhile, on Friday – when the highest number of people tested positive so far on a single day – 11 more persons died, taking the total number of COVID-19 deaths to 294. Another 72 deaths of COVID-19 positive cases have taken place due to co-morbidities. The total number of deaths of COVID-19 positive persons is thus 366.
The total number of positive cases in Bengal has gone up to 7,303. Currently, the number of active cases in the state is 4,025. On Friday, 144 more persons were discharged from hospitals, taking the discharge rate to 39.87 per cent.
A total of 9,686 samples were tested on Friday, taking the total number of samples tested to 2,41,831, with the percentage of positive cases out of the samples tested being 2.90 per cent.
The number of laboratories conducting tests across the state is now 42. A total of 8,785 beds have been earmarked in the 69 dedicated Covid-19 hospitals throughout the state, with an occupancy rate of 19.57 per cent of COVID-19 beds, according to the health bulletin of the state health department.
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