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WB registers 365% surge in new Covid cases over last month

West Bengal has registered nearly a 365 per cent surge in number of new Covid-19 cases over the last one month. The newly reported cases stand at 1,094 as on July 25, 2022, up from 235 cases as on June 25. This is nearly a 36 per cent jump from the 806 new cases registered on July 25, 2021.

The State reported seven deaths on July 25, up from two deaths during the same period last month. The total number of deaths reported by the State stood at nine cases during the same period last year, according to the State health bulletin.

It is to be noted that the Delta variant have caused wide scale infections, and fatality last year across the country.

While health experts do not consider the current wave to be as severe as the first or second wave, they do think that it is “more severe” compared to the third wave caused by the Omicron variant.

According to Dipankar Sarkar, Consultant, Internal Medicine and Critical Care, Manipal Hospital, the current surge in Covid numbers might be called a wave in ‘retrospect’.

“The first and second wave has had agreat impact on our health care system. The third wave was mostly an outpatient problem with few casualties. But the current wave is not milder like the third wave; it is more severe because, some of the people who are at extremes of age are developing lung symptoms,” Sarkar told BusinessLine.

Experts point out that, withschools and colleges opening up, there has been a spike in number of cases among children below the age of 12 years who are not yet vaccinated.

Positivity rate swell
The total number of Covid positive cases in the State stood at 20,86,483 as on July 25, up from 15,23,639 same period last year. The number of tests have also significantly dropped on a year-on-year basis at 8,645 in July this year, as against 50,053 last year. However, testing has increased in comparison. The positivity rate as on July 25, 2022 stood at 12.65 per cent, against 1.61 per cent last year. Last month, the positivity rate was at 7.27 per cent.

Incidentally, West Bengal is among the nine States that are witnessing a surge in Covid cases and reporting high positivity rates, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s data. Experts say that, the level of surveillance and testing is poor, and vaccination is below average in some of these states undergoing the present surge. The average tests per million population was below the national average in atleast six out of the nine states, including Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh.

However, experts do not think there is need to press the panic button yet.

“Most of the cases that you have seen are predominantly outpatient. For almost three to four months, we had zero Covid cases in the hospital. And now we have close to 18 to 20 patients in the hospital,” Aviral Roy, Consultant-Intensivist, Internal medicine and critical care, Medica Super Speciality Hospital, said.

According to him, the symptoms will be restricted to cough, cold and viral fever in most cases. The Hindu BusinessLine

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