Send daily Covid report, Bengal govt asks pvt hosps, labs

Kolkata: Amid the rising cases of Covid in the country, the state health department has issued its first advisory since the pandemic asking all private hospitals and labs to report all positive cases in a particular format on a daily basis.

The labs across the state have also started preserving the Covid-19 positive samples, anticipating that they might be asked to send those for genome sequencing to detect the virus strain circulating in Bengal.

The state health department has not yet released the actual Covid load in the state but there is already an uptick. At least six more cases surfaced on Thursday.

Hospitals have also started increasing tests, particularly for patients with various comorbidities and symptoms of the infection. Sources said Medica Superspecialty Hospital currently has four Covid positive patients, one of whom was admitted on Thursday.

While none of the four are having severe illness, doctors said the hospital admission was advised as they are vulnerable to developing severe symptoms due to existing health conditions. "For almost a year, we did not see any Covid patients. Now, a few cases have started trickling in, all with mild symptoms.

While the symptoms are likely to be mild in most cases, those with comorbidities need to stay safe as they are the most vulnerable," said critical care and ECMO physician, Dipanjan Chatterjee of Medica.

An 84-year-old cancer patient, tested positive at Ruby General Hospital. Another 40-year-old woman, who came to the OPD, had mild symptoms and did not require hospital admission.


"We tested about eight samples in the past week, out of which two were positive. While there is no reason to panic, we have scaled up testing, especially on symptomatic patients and we have kept our isolation ward ready," said Subhasish Datta, chief general manager operations at Ruby.

Microbiologist Partha Guchhait of Peerless Hospital said while most cases were likely to be mild and flu-like, increasing testing, especially on those symptomatic, could give an indication if there was a clustering of cases.

The hospital is also preserving the samples. Experts said the strain causing the current uptick is likely to be JN.1 or a similar sub-lineage of the Omicron variant, reported from other countries.

However, they said sequencing was needed to find out the exact variant. "So far, we know the virus circulating elsewhere is a variant of concern due to high transmissibility, even as it is known to cause mild infection," said internal medicine specialist, Rahul Jain of Belle Vue Clinic.