West Bengal reports 24 fresh Covid-19 cases, death toll mounts to 10

During a press conference at Nabanna, Rajiva Sinha said 51 Covid-19 patients had recovered so far with nine more persons had been discharged in last 24 hours.

"West Bengal has tested 3811 samples for Covid-19 so far," Sinha said.

"Presently, 3915 people are in institutional quarantine while 36982 persons are under home isolation in the state," Rajiva Sinha added.

According to state government officials, 3,47,000 PPEs, 2,23,000 N95 masks, 15,70,000 normal surgical masks, 6,95,000 gloves & 70,000 litres of sanitizer have been distributed so far to the state hospitals fighting Covid-19.

The figure came at a time the Mamata Banerjee government is facing heat from the Opposition as well as the Centre over West Bengal's alleged lesser conduction of testing.

Countering West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's claim that there were minimum Covid-19 test kits available in the state, the Director of ICMR-NICED in Kolkata, Shanta Dutta, on Monday confirmed that there was no shortage of Covid-19 test kits in their lab, but they were not getting enough samples from the state for test. 

Regarding the identification of the Centre's four hotspots in West Bengal, Sinha on Thursday said the state and central governments are on the same page to tackle the COVID-19.

The central government has identified four districts- Kolkata, Howrah, North 24 Parganas and East Midnapore- as the Coronavirus hotspots.

(Image Credit: Avishek Mitra/IBNS)