2 cases in a day, Bengal Covid tally rises 20 times in 2 weeks

Kolkata: From a mere 13 active cases until the second week of May, active Covid-19 cases in Bengal rose to a staggering 287 on Sunday, increasing more than 20 times over the past fortnight. According to the Centre's Covid dashboard, Bengal had the fifth-highest caseload among all states.

Even as 82 fresh Covid cases were reported in the past 24 hours, mostly from Kolkata, health department officials said the situation is under control and there was no need to press the panic button.

Doctors emphasised that prevention is key, especially for those vulnerable to severe infection, to keep the virus at bay.

In the first week of May, the state logged only one Covid case. Twelve more cases appeared by the second week, raising the active case tally to 13. Sources said the rapid uptick in cases started from the third week.

On May 31, the Union health ministry mandated all labs to update Covid-positive data on a daily basis, changing the weekly reporting norm that was in force since June 2024, due to a sharp rise in cases across states.

On Saturday, the first day of the daily reporting mandate, the reported active caseload was 205, with 89 fresh cases. On Sunday, the active caseload rose further to 287.

"The situation is under control as most cases are already mild infections, and most of those admitted have pre-existing conditions. There is no reason to panic. We are monitoring the situation closely," said a state health official.

Despite the health department's assurance of close monitoring, there has been no guideline issued on testing, treatment or preserving samples for genomic sequencing yet.

The only govt guideline issued amid the current spike has been to ask private labs to submit Covid-positive reports parallelly to the health department, in addition to uploading them with the Indian Council of Medical Research.

"While there is no reason to press an alarm bell, we need to be proactive, at least by issuing certain guidelines that would trigger the public and doctors to remain alert," said a senior doctor at a govt hospital.

Senior pulmonologist Dhiman Ganguly, who was part of the state's expert committee on Covid during the first wave, said the virus is likely to cause mostly mild infections.

"If tests are conducted on everyone with respiratory infections, the number of positive cases could be at least 10 times higher than the present data. But even if the virus was half as virulent as what we saw during the first two waves, we would not have a good number of severe cases," Ganguly added.

Labs across the city said that while the number of swab samples has increased slightly in the past three to four weeks, the numbers are still not very high, and the positivity rate is between 15% and 20%.

"In terms of severity, the situation does not seem alarming. But testing could play a role in preventing the vulnerable — individuals at the extreme ends of age, the immunocompromised and those with comorbidities — because these infections could be a double whammy for them," said microbiologist Partha Guchhait of Peerless Hospital.