The Mamata Banerjee government on Wednesday reported releases of 90 Covid-19 patients following cure, taking the total number of discharged people to 702 and the recovery rate to 30.66 per cent.

The cure of the 90 brings about a sharp rise of nearly 13 per cent in the recovery rate in as many days in May. Besides, over 5,000 tests were conducted for the second consecutive day on Wednesday, taking the tests per million to 640 from 183 on April 30.

The number of new Covid-19 cases, in 24 hours till 9am on Wednesday, was 117. The total number of people in Bengal found infected with the pathogen till date was 2,290. The number of active novel coronavirus positive cases stood at 1,381, Calcutta accounting for 645 of them.

The number of deaths directly from the infection rose to 135 with nine people succumbing to the disease in the past 24 hours. There were, till April 30, 72 other deaths of Covid-19 persons, attributed to comorbidities by the state.

Of the 207 total deaths, 140 were from Calcutta, 29 from North 24-Parganas and 25 from Howrah.

“Our key takeaways are the steadily rising number of cured cases and the recovery rate, the improvement in testing stats and the falling positive confirmation rate, which is now 3.97 per cent from the 4.6 per cent on April 30,” said a minister.

With 5,010 tests in the past 24 hours, the state has conducted a total of 57,632 tests.

There were two more laboratories approved by the Centre for testing Covid-19, the NRS Medical College and Hospital and Sanaka Hospitals.

The state now has 20 approved hospitals, with three more awaiting approval.

The most tests have been conducted by the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in Siliguri, at 9,360, followed by NICED in Calcutta, at 8,628.

“At this rate, we could go past the 6,000 tests a day mark in a week’s time,” said the minister.

Bengal now has 8,146 people in the 582 state-run quarantine centres and another 26,357 in home quarantine.

The home quarantine numbers shot up by 17,000-odd in a matter of five days.

“This spike that you see in the home quarantine numbers is because of the return of migrant workers and others from Bengal stranded elsewhere. This number will keep going up in the coming days,” said the minister.