After 15 days of restrictions imposed by the West Bengal government which was coming to an end on Saturday, the state recorded the lowest number of fresh Covid-19 cases on Saturday, health officials said here on Sunday.

Not only that there has been a sharp decline in the number of daily positive cases and the rate of positivity for the last five days compared to the beginning of the month. This has allowed the government to continue with restrictions for the next 15 days.

“The restrictions imposed by the state government are showing positive results. The number of positive cases has come down and the rate of positivity which was more than 30 per cent in the beginning of the month has come to around 18-19 per cent. So, as the restriction is giving positive results, we have decided to increase it by another 15 days,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee said.

The data released by the state government shows that West Bengal registered 11,514 fresh new cases on Saturday- the lowest since the second wave hit the state in the last week of April. Not only that, the rate of positivity was 18.1 per cent on Saturday compared to 32.6 per cent on April 30 and 32.3 per cent on April 29. The state registered the highest positivity rate on April 26 when it was 32.9 per cent.

The number of fresh cases has also dropped down considerably in the last five days in the state. When on May 25 the number of cases in the state was 17,005, it came down to 16,225 on May 26 and then it started to gradually decrease in the following days. On May 27, the number of cases came down to 13,046 followed by 12,193 on April 28 and it was the lowest in the month with only 11,514 cases on May 29.

The rate of positivity has also shown marked improvement. When in the last of April, the positivity rate was soaring around 32 per cent it plummeted to around 18 per cent on Saturday, an improvement of nearly 14 per cent in one month. “We will have to bring down the rate of positivity below 10 per cent and that is possible only through a conscious effort of the citizens of the state. The people have showed enough restraint and if they maintain this for the next 15 days then we are hopeful that we will be able to control the spread of the infection,” State Director of Health Services Ajay Chakraborty said.

Even if we consider the condition of the state just before the commencement of the lockdown, we will find the state covid graph has shown marked signs of improvement. On May 14 – just before the announcement of the lockdown on May 16, positivity rate was 29.7 per cent with the active cases crossing the 20,000 mark, on May 29 it came down to 18.1 per cent. In the last five days the rate of positivity has also decreased substantially. On May 25 the rate of positivity was 25.7 per cent and it came down to 24.5 per cent on May 26 followed by 22.8 per cent on May 27 and 20.6 per cent on May 28.

“We will have to bear the hardship for a few days more but experts believe that the restrictions are creating a positive impact on the covid infection of the state. Even the death rate which is only 0.56 per cent is lower than that of the first wave when it was around 1.16 per cent,” the chief minister said.