West Bengal reports highest single-day COVID-19 toll at 162, over 19,000 new cases

Kolkata: West Bengal's COVDID-19 toll climbed to 13,895 on Thursday after record 162 fatalities were reported, the health department said in a bulletin.It said that 19,091 fresh cases of infection took the overall count to 12,09,958.In the past 24 hours, 18,910 people recovered from the viral infection in the state, improving the discharge rate slightly to 87.98 percent. So far, 10,64,553 patients have been cured.West Bengal currently has 1,31,510 active cases.Of the new fatalities, Kolkata and neighbouring North 24 Parganas district accounted for 37 fresh fatalities each. The remaining deaths were reported from several other districts, the bulletin said.Of the 162 deaths, 86 were due to comorbidities where COVID-19 was incidental. The 19,091 new positive cases included 4,118 from North 24 Parganas and 3,461 from Kolkata.Since Wednesday, at least 70,638 samples were tested for the novel coronavirus in West Bengal, taking the total number of such tests to 1,17,08,770, the bulletin added.