kolkata the city now has the highest positivity among all districts in the state health department sources said on friday labs across kolkata are seeing a massive surge in positivity in the past few days with the rate ranging between 20 and 40 the fresh covid count though came down to 657 on friday from 745 the previous day but the overall test positivity rate in bengal remained high at 7close to half of the positive cases are being reported from kolkata and hence the citys positivity is quite alarming now though the number needing hospital admission is still low the elderly the immunocompromised and those with comorbidities are vulnerable they should remain guarded said an official at health departmentthe last time bengal logged a positivity rate of 7 was in januaryend it nosedived below 1 by february third week before it rose above 1 on june 6due to the changed testing protocol hospitals are testing only patients who have symptoms those who need to undergo procedures like ent or dental surgeries or those who need a negative report for travel purposethere is a massive surge in the positivity rate in the past few days this could be because we are testing symptomatic patients mostly said sudipta mitra ceo peerless hospital for example of the 40 samples processed in the hospitals lab on thursday 19 were found positive nine samples tested positive out of 20 the previous daytest numbers are still very few but there is a steep spike in the positivity rate in our lab which is about 25 said r venkatesh regional director east narayana healthdoctors however said only a handful of patients currently are requiring oxygen or critical care and they are cases of incidental covid with multiple comorbidities from midapril to june first week we hardly used to get any positive sample now there is an exponential rise and this is the nature of the virus spread which is unlikely to go out of control in fact we expect such periodic surges every five to six months as the infection becomes endemic said microbiologist bhaskar narayan chaudhuri of peerless hospitalthe positivity in standalone diagnostic labs like suraksha is around 15with small mutations in virus such small waves will come and go and these are signs of endemic phase with antigens changing the virus becomes less virulent said microbiologist swatilekha banerjee of rn tagore international institute of cardiac sciences