The Calcutta High Court has done well to limit the crowd for Durga Puja celebrations, given how infections in West Bengal were on the rise. However, early trends show the festival fervour seems to have contributed to a spurt in cases, at least in Kolkata. Indeed, Kolkata is the only major metropolis where the growth rate of infections has risen in October.
As of October 25, cases in the city were growing by 1.2% daily, higher than 1.1% growth witnessed in September. Thus, it is not surprising that Kolkata had added more cases in the three weeks in October than it did in the entire month of September.
More worrying, however, is the fact that active cases in the state have jumped 1.8-times in the last one month. And, this has also led to a rise in hospitalisations. Although data on ICU and ventilator occupancy is not available, hospitalisation rates seem to be rising. On September 25, for instance, Kolkata had only 68.2% of its capacity occupied, but on October 25 this had increased to 75.1%.
While there has been only a slight change in occupancy rates in private hospitals, increasing from 72.3% on September 25 to 73.8% on October 25, in government hospitals occupancy has gone up from 63.4% to 77%.Although testing data for Kolkata is not available, positivity rate—daily cases upon daily tests—has also been rising. West Bengal’s positivity on October 24 was 9.3% as compared to 7.1% on September 24, even though the state has decreased its testing. While West Bengal was testing over 45,000 samples daily, now it is testing 43,000.
