West Bengal reported the highest single-day recovery of 3,917 coronavirus patients on Tuesday, a day after the Durga puja was concluded, though there was apprehension of a “tsunami of COVID-19 infections” if people were allowed to visit marquees in large numbers.
The health department said that 3,957 more people tested positive for the disease during the day, while the figure was 4,121 on Monday, the last day of the festival.
With a sigh of relief, a top bureaucrat of the state government said the high court order declaring puja pandals no-entry zones to prevent the surge of COVID-19 cases helped the administration a lot.
“Otherwise, it could have been a situation beyond our control. We also thank the common people for showing restraint and staying at home. We hope that better days are coming soon,” he said.
West Bengal, where the number of daily infections witnessed a decline mid-August till early September, had been registering record spike of new infections every day following people going for a shopping spree at malls and market places for the festivities.
Doctors had issued warnings that the state might see a tsunami of COVID-19 infections if people are not restricted from gatherings during this year’s Durga puja festival.
The Calcutta High Court on October 20 declared all pandals across West Bengal no-entry zones to prevent the surge of COVID-19 cases in the state.
The recovery of 3,917 COVID-19 patients on Tuesday took the total number of cured people to 3,14,003, the health department said in a bulletin.
The discharge rate was recorded at 87.76 per cent. The death toll mounted to 6,604 after 58 fresh fatalities were reported from different parts of the state.
Of the new deaths, 14 were recorded in the city and 11 in North 24 Parganas. The remaining casualties were registered from several other districts.
Out of the 58 fatalities, 50 were primarily because of comorbidities where COVID-19 was incidental.
The bulletin said that the state’s coronavirus tally pushed to 3,57,779 as 3,957 more people tested positive for the infection. The new cases included 884 in Kolkata and 875 in North 24 Parganas district.
West Bengal now has 37,172 active cases, it said. Since Monday, 42,108 samples were tested for COVID-19 in the state, taking the total number of such tests to 43,82,678.
Meanwhile, a government doctor in his early 50s succumbed to COVID-19, taking the number of deaths of medical practitioners to over 20, state health department officials said.
Dr Amal Roy, who was posted at the Suri District Hospital in Birbhum district, tested positive for the disease around two weeks ago. He died early Tuesday morning at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital here.
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