A COVID-19 patient’s dead body, which had gone missing from a hospital in Howrah from Wednesday night, was found in a pond nearby on Friday. Following the incident, patient’s family member took to violence.

According to a report by ABP Ananda, the patient a mechanical engineer by profession, was admitted to Sanjeevani Hospital after he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus earlier this week.

However, the family and the hospital had lost track of the patient since Wednesday night. After the entire day of search operation by the hospital officials on Thursday had not fetched any result, the patient was found dead floating on a pond 200 metres away from the hospital.

Violence erupted soon after the dead body was recovered as the family members gheraoed the police officials, demanding a fair investigation into the case. There were also incidents of stone pelting.

The hospital, in its defence, said that the patient might have had depression. The CMHO informed that an internal investigation had already begun.

To maintain peace in the region and ensure that the law and order situation was not disturbed, especially in a hospital designated for COVID-19 treatment, the police deployed Rapid Action Force (RAF) and Combat Force.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus curve in West Bengal is yet to flatten whatsoever as the state is witnessing new records of daily cases everyday for the last one week or so.

The state on Thursday witnessed the biggest single-day spike of 3,720 COVID-19 cases, taking to the total number of cases to 3,09,417. The number of active cases are also on the rise with 31,984 coronavirus patients currently undergoing treatment. To add salt to the injury, discharge rate has also dropped to 87.77%.

A total of 62 deaths were reported in the past 24 hours till the latest West Bengal Health Department bulletin came out on Thursday. Kolkata recorded 17 deaths, while North 24 Parganas and Howrah witnessed 14 and six deaths respectively. The state has so far seen 5,870 coronavirus-related deaths.

The sudden spike in COVID-19 cases can be linked directly to the low testing in West Bengal. After a steady increase in the number of daily testing – both rapid antigen and RT-PCR tests – throughout the month of July, August and the first few weeks if September, the state has kept the bar of daily testing at around 42-43 thousands for the last 3-4 weeks.