Kolkata, May 4 (IANS): West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha said on Monday that the Covid-19 death toll in the state has touched 61 with as many as 1,259 confirmed cases being reported so far.

"The Covid-19 death toll has touched 61 in Bengal so far. The total number of confirmed cases across the state stands at 1,259. As many as 218 corona affected patients have already been discharged from the hospitals," Sinha told a press conference at the state secretariat Nabanna.

He said that the state administration has ramped up the rapid testing process in the last few days and the results are quite satisfactory.

"The total number of tests per million stood at 109 10 days back while now the figure is 279 per million. The total number of corona patents who are now undergoing treatments in West Bengal is 908 now," he said.

The Chief Secretary said that the corona recovery rate in the state is about 17.32 per cent.

"We are in a comfortable situation now as far as the Covid-19 tests are concerned. As many as 5,755 people are currently home quarantined across West Bengal. Previously, the Covid-19 data collection system was too complicated. A lot of data could not be retrieved due to that. We could not release daily news bulletins because of that only," Sinha said, adding that now the system has been streamlined.

He said that altogether, 25,116 Covid-19 tests have been carried out in the state so far with at least 2,201 corona sample tests in the last 24-hours. "We have received 61 fresh corona cases in the last 24 hours," he said.

Sinha said that initially there were some hiccups in the supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits. "Now we have adequate PPE kits available with us. We have so far distributed 5.8 lakh PPE kits and 3.15 lakh N-95 masks among doctors, medical staff and other officials across the state, besides the distribution of hand sanitisers," he said.

The members of the Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT), which left for New Delhi on Monday morning, wrote a letter to Sinha asking the state government not to downplay the spread of the virus and to be transparent and consistent in reporting figures.

"The state needs to be transparent and consistent in reporting figures and not downplay the spread of coronavirus. The bulletins of May 1 and May 2 do not even mention the total number of cases and deaths in the state," Apurva Chandra, Special Secretary to the Government of India, who was heading the central expert team, wrote in a letter.

Chandra also mentioned in the communication that while the state government had claimed very high level of daily surveillance of individuals in the containment zones, no database was shown or results made available.

The IMCT is supposed to submit its final report to the Union Home Minister. "We hope that the suggestions conveyed to the state government through various communications would be seen and taken up for consideration in the right spirit," Chandra said.