17 deaths in a day, 10 from Kolkata, take West Bengal’s Covid-19 toll to 432

KOLKATA: On Wednesday, the state reported 17 deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the total Covid-19 death toll to 432 in Bengal. This was the highest single-day death toll after June 6, when an equal number of deaths was recorded. Health department officials said 66.7% of the total deaths were patients who had co-morbid conditions.
Ten of the 17 deaths were reported from Kolkata, while four was from North 24 Parganas, two from Howrah and one from Murshidabad.

Before June, apart from May 15 in the recent past when the day’s Covid-19 death count was 10, the state had been recording daily tolls mostly in single digits. But in June, of the 10 days so far, eight have had death figures in double digits.
“With increasing number of tests, the number of the infected and the death count will also rise. But the spike in deaths is of course a major cause for concern. Though many of the deaths pertain to Covid patients who had serious co-morbidities, we are working on a way to check the number of deaths,” said a health department official.
With 343 new cases, the total number of people affected by Covid in the state rose to 9,328. So far, a total of 3,779 patients have been treated and discharged from from different hospitals across the state, 159 alone on Wednesday. The discharge rate so far was 40.5% and the total active cases stood at 5,117.
Till date, the total number of Covid-19 samples tested is 2,97, 419. Even as the state had started rapidly ramping up testing, the number of samples tested has stagnated in the past few days, hovering around 9,000-9,500. In fact, it had gone down to 7,802 on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it was 9,519.
“When we had started targeting 10,000 tests a day, Amphan happened, putting brakes on the speed at which we were going ahead. Some laboratories were still struggling to deal with the backlog even a few days ago. We expect a few more laboratories to start testing soon. In that case, we will be able to touch 10,000 daily tests and go above,” said a source at Swasthya Bhawan.
“A large number of medical technologists are going to be engaged on a temporary basis who will help in collecting samples and testing,” the source added.