Kolkata: The COVID-19 death toll in West Bengal rose to 2,203 Wednesday after 54 people succumbed to the disease, the state’s health department said. West Bengal’s coronavirus count has gone up to 1,04,326 after 2,936 new cases of infection were reported in the last 24 hours. The number of active patients is 26,003 in West Bengal, the health department said.
Since Tuesday, 2,725 COVID-19 patients have been discharged from different hospitals of West Bengal. In the last 24 hours, 27,712 samples have been tested, the bulletin said
However, in spite of the heavy caseload, the West Bengal government Wednesday effected a change in the state-wide complete lockdowns in the state for the fifth time. The lockdowns were decreased by a day by withdrawing the slated one August 28.
The decision to withdraw the complete lockdown August 28 was taken after several communications were received citing difficulty to conduct business and banking operations because of two days’ lockdown during Thursday (August 27) and Friday (August 28) in the last week of the month followed by the one-day lockdown on the following Monday (August 31), the order issued by chief secretary Rajiva Sinha said.
Complete lockdowns were to be held on the three dates as per the earlier decision of the government.
“The state government has considered the requests for the relaxation of the lockdown as would be necessary and essential. Therefore, in partial modification, lockdown on Friday (August 28) as noted earlier is hereby withdrawn,” the order said.
Statewide complete lockdown will now be observed on four days for the rest of this month instead of five days as announced earlier. The dates of complete lockdown in West Bengal will be August 20, 21, 27 and 31, it said. Earlier this month complete lockdown was observed August 5 and 8.