West Bengal announces complete lockdown for 9 days in August

The West Bengal government today announced complete lockdown throughout the state twice a week, including all Sundays, in August in order to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission.

This means there will be complete lockdown across the state on nine separate days in August.

The announcement by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee came a day after West Bengal for the first time reported discharging of more Covid-19 patients than the number of fresh cases. The recovery rate also climbed to 65.62 percent.

A total of 2,166 patients were discharged in 24 hours till Monday night, which saw the state's active caseload decline for the first time in more than a month -- from 19,595 to 19,502. So far, 39,917 patients in the state have recovered from the disease.

The state Health Department said a record 17,005 tests were conducted in 24 hours, taking the cumulative number of samples examined to 8,22,190.