kolkata: The Sentinel survey carried out by the state health department from July 6 to 8 reveals that Covid infection rate in nine districts of Bengal is around 5 to 10 per cent while in eleven districts the infection rate is between 10 to 20 per cent.
Infection rate in different places of North Bengal and East Midnapore was recorded over 20 per cent during this period. Among the nine districts where the infection rate is below 10 per cent, there are districts like Bankura, West Midnapore, South 24-Parganas, Hooghly, Malda, Jalpaiguri etc. Infection rate has been detected nearly around 23 per cent in North 24-Parganas, around 24 per cent in East Midnapore's Nandigram. Kolkata has registered an infection rate at around 13 per cent while Howrah saw around 14 per cent infection rate during this period. Kalimpong and Darjeeling also registered high infection rates of around 19 and 18 per cent respectively.
According to the health department data, the infection rate started climbing up from the middle of June. A Sentinel survey done between a period of June 15 and 17, said that the infection rate then stood at 1 per cent in eight districts of Bengal. The figure was registered at 1.40 per cent in Hooghly, 1.45 per cent in Darjeeling, East Midnapore 1.56 per cent, Howrah 2.33 and North 24-Parganas 1.75 per cent that time. During June 1-3, most of the districts had an infection rate between 0-1 per cent. Health department conducted the fourth phase of a sentinel survey from June 1 and samples were collected from 28 medical colleges and district hospitals from 23 districts and 5 health districts.
It aims to find out if asymptomatic Covid infections are taking place in the state. The survey was mostly performed on the patients having no symptoms. Surveys conducted in April and May revealed that infection almost became nil in various districts. The earlier sentinel survey report also showed that infection rate in Kolkata also flattened.
Along with the survey, the state government also continues with its search to find out whether any new variant of coronavirus has evolved in the state. Sentinel surveillance is monitoring of the rate of occurrence of a specific disease through the voluntary network of doctors and laboratories aiming to assess the stability in health levels of the population of a particular region.