Bengal case count hits 65,000

(Photo: IStock)


West Bengal’s Covid case count crossed 65,000 today with 2,294 fresh cases and 41 deaths in the last 24 hours. This has come on the third day of the biweekly lockdown across the state which has been enforced to break the chain of increasing Covid cases.

The situation in the most affected districts remained critical with Kolkata recording 688 fresh cases and 17 deaths, North 24-Parganas 554 cases and nine deaths and Howrah 258 cases and four deaths.

Of the remaining deaths, five deaths were registered in South 24-Parganas and one each in West Burdwan, East Midnapore, Malda, South Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling. The first complete lockdown for August would be enforced on the 5th (Wednesday). Officials said that long distance trains and flight operations would be suspended.

Till now, 65,258 people have been detected Covid positive and 1,490 died in the state; currently, there are 19,652 active cases.

A total of 44,116 patients have recovered with 2,094 patients being discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours. The discharge rate stood at 67.60 per cent today. Along with complete lockdown on five days in August, the lockdown in the broad-based containment zones would continue, with currently a total of 1206 such zones across the state.

Of these, the highest number of 157 containment zones are in East Burdwan, 162 in Nadia and 129 in West Midnapore. In the most affected districts, Kolkata has 31 zones, North 24-Parganas 110, Howrah 91, South 24-Parganas 79 and Hooghly 42.