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More than 100 doctors in three different hospitals of Kolkata have tested positive for coronavirus in a span of 24 hours, a senior health official told news agency PTI on Monday.
As many as 70 doctors of Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital, 24 medical practitioners of Chittaranjan Seva Sadan and Shishu Sadan Hospital in Kalighat, and 12 of the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology have tested positive for the infection, the official said.
"The doctors have been asked to go for institutional quarantine," he added.
He also said that contact tracing has begun, and the process of clinical examination of everyone in the three hospitals has started.
Meanwhile, the daily Covid-19 cases in West Bengal have shot up over 11 times in a week, while in the case of Kolkata, the increase is over 14 times during the period, according to the state government data.
Bengal on Sunday recorded 6,153 infections with Kolkata accounting for 3,194 of them, a health department bulletin said. On December 26, the respective figures were 544 and 219.
The state had recorded 4,512 Covid-19 cases on Saturday, with the metropolis alone reporting 2,398 of them.
The bulletin said that eight people died of coronavirus on Sunday, while nine such patients had perished the previous day.
A total of 19,781 people have died of the disease so far, according to the bulletin.
Of the eight fresh fatalities in the state, two persons died in Kolkata, three in North 24 Parganas, two in Hooghly and one in Howrah districts, the bulletin said.
The positivity rate went up to 15.93 per cent from 12.02 per cent the previous day, while the number of daily tests went up from Saturday's 37,542 to 38,633 on Sunday, it said.
North 24 Parganas followed Kolkata to be in the second position in the number of infections at 994 cases on Sunday, up from 688 on the previous day, the bulletin said.
Apart from Kolkata and North 24 Parganas, the other districts which recorded high incidence of cases are Howrah (595), South 24 Parganas (280), Paschim Bardhaman (257), Hooghly (218), Birbhum (140) and Nadia (102), according to the data.
As 2,407 Covid patients were discharged on Sunday, the recovery rate stood at 97.77 per cent, it said.
A total of 16,12,331 people have been cured of the infection so far, it said, adding that the number of total Covid cases recorded in the state is 16,49,150.
Altogether 2,14,68,047 samples have been tested for Covid-19 in West Bengal so far, the bulletin said.
With agency inputs
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