West Bengal reports record 20,136 new COVID cases, 132 more deaths

West Bengal's daily tally of new COVID-19 cases breached the 20,000-mark on Tuesday, while 132 more people died in the state taking the death toll to 12,593, the Health Department said in a bulletin.

A record 20,136 new cases took the tally to 10,32,740, it said. West Bengal recorded 18,994 recoveries during the last 24 hours, pushing the number of cured people to 8,92,474. The discharge rate currently is 86.47 per cent.

There are 1,27,673 active cases in the state at present. Of the fresh fatalities, 39 were registered in North 24 Parganas district, 37 in Kolkata and 15 in South 24 Parganas, the bulletin said.

The remaining deaths were reported from several other districts. Sixty-one of the 132 new deaths were due to comorbidities where COVID-19 was incidental.

The 20,136 new positive cases included 3,998 from North 24 Parganas district and 3,973 from Kolkata, the bulletin said.

The cases were detected after testing 68,142 samples in the last 24 hours, taking the positivity rate to 29.55 per cent. The total number of such tests in the state so far is 1,10,99,069.

Meanwhile, amid the ongoing vaccine crisis, the state government has tagged each private hospital with a government health facility where any resident of Kolkata, New Town and Bidhannagar could walk in and get the second dose of Covishield or Covaxin absolutely free, an official said.