Increase in recovery rate gives a boost to Bengal’s fight against COVID

A gradual increase in the rate of recovery of patients from COVID-19 has given a ray of hope to the health department of West Bengal, even as the number of new cases had doubled in the last fortnight.

Health officials attribute the rise in recovery rate to the faster recuperation among migrant workers, who are reportedly recovering in around a week even without hospitalisation.

While the rate of recovery was 47.79 per cent on June 15, it increased to 53.11 per cent on June 17. On the same day, 391 new cases were detected, as against 505 people being discharged.

If this trend continues, department sources said the total number of cases could be capped below 50,000-mark in the next two months, which could be considered as a success. As on June 17, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the state was 11,909, of which the number of active cases was 5,261 down by 125 from the previous day’s count.

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Interestingly, even senior BJP leader Mukul Roy on June 16 hailed the increase in recovery rate.

The department sources added that if the recovery rate continued to increase, the state need not rush to enhance the COVID-19 treatment infrastructure. This would be a great relief to the department considering that it had been facing resistance in its bid to increase the number of dedicated COVID hospitals.

For the past several days, residents as well as junior doctors had been protesting over the government’s move to turn College of Medicine and Sagore Dutta Hospital at Kamarhati in Kolkata into a dedicated COVID-19 facility.

There are 77 hospitals with 10,105 beds earmarked for exclusive COVID-19 treatment in the state. Of these, 53 are private hospitals, while 24 are run by the government.

These facilities have only 948 ICU beds and just 395 ventilators. But luckily the department was not feeling the crunch because 56 per cent of the new cases were migrant workers until the last count, the sources said. Of the 5,993 cases detected between May 31 and June 14, 3,358 were migrant workers, an official said.

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“Not even one per cent of them (migrant workers) developed severe symptoms that needed life support,” the official added.

So far, 6,63,823 migrant workers have returned to the state on trains, while a few thousands more came on buses and by other means. Most workers are in the age group of 20 to 50 years and so are healthy and do not develop acute symptoms, the official said.

He said the department had decided to treat asymptomatic migrant workers by keeping them in ‘safe homes’, instead of hospitals to have more beds for other needy patients.

Another positive trend, the official said, is the concentration of most of the new cases within Kolkata, Howrah and North 24 Parganas districts. Kolkata with 2,183 active cases tops the chart of worst-affected districts, followed by North 24 Parganas (736) and Howrah (555).

Considering the high concentration of cases in Kolkata, private hospitals in the city have been asked to increase the number of dedicated COVID-19 beds.

Meanwhile, despite the rise in cases, footfalls in malls and other business establishments in Kolkata are increasing. The city’s six major malls, according to an estimate, collectively did a business of around ₹27 crore on the first week of Unlock 1.0, since their reopening on June 8.