Covid tests must for people arriving from Bangladesh

kolkata: State government has directed all the bordering districts to carry out Covid tests mandatorily for those arriving in the state from Bangladesh, as our neighbouring country has been designated as a country 'At Risk'. If any Bangladeshi is tested positive for Covid, he or she will be put under isolation.

All the District Magistrates of the bordering districts have been asked to ensure that the directives are followed and survillance is conducted properly. A video conference was conducted by the chief secretary HK Dwivedi with the DMS of bordering districts where health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam was also present.

Centre has already written to all the states urging them to conduct rigorous surveillance for international passengers especially from those countries where new Covid strain Omicron has been found. This new varint has been termed as 'variant of concern' and the countries have been designated as 'At Risk'.

Meanwhile, single-day Covid cases have gone down significantly on Monday as 511 cases were found while on Sunday the figure stood at 715. State saw 701 cases on Saturday and 710 on Friday.

Active Covid cases in the state have further gone down to 7,733 on Monday from 7,804 on Sunday. As many as 571 Covid recovered patients have been released from different hospitals in the past 24 hours. The Covid recovery rate stood at 98.32 per cent on Monday. The percentage of occupancy of Covid beds in the State dropped to 2.20 percent on Monday from 2.31 percent on Sunday.The total number of infected cases in Bengal has so far gone up to 16,15,378 on Monday out of which 15,88,172 patients have been released from hospitals after being recovered. Covid positivity rate in Bengal went up to 2.11 percent on Monday from 2.01 on Sunday.

Around 24,269 samples were tested across the state on Monday. State has so far carried out 2,02,82,523 sample tests. The RTPCR and Antigen test ratio remained at 61:39 on Monday.

Single day-Covid fatalities dropped to 11 on Monday.