The recovery rate slid further on Friday to 91.12 from 91.77 per cent on Thursday.

However, it has become increasingly clear since that it was part of a much larger, nationwide wave and not an isolated regional spike. The trigger then was identified by sources in the state government as a general disregard for Covid-19 safety protocols among revellers in Calcutta and surrounding areas in the run up to Christmas. The surge was initially confined to the city and its immediate neighbourhood. In the 17 days since, the state has logged nearly 2.32 lakh new infections, including 85,824 from Calcutta. The total active caseload was 7,457 then. On December 28 - the last day of relatively normal numbers before the latest spell of the surge in Bengal, the statewide total was 752, including 382 from Calcutta. But it still means one out of every three tests is returning positive.

The positive confirmation rate - the percentage of samples testing positive for the novel coronavirus - improved on Friday slightly to 31.14 from 32.13 per cent on Thursday. The stateвЂ™s mortality rate is 1.07 per cent now, with that of infected males at 1.26 and of infected females 0.83. The 75-plus age group, with 22.7 per cent of the deaths, has the highest mortality rate, of 6.68. The most deaths - nearly 42 per cent - took place in the 61-75 age bracket, which has a mortality rate of 3.07. Over 90 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths in Bengal were of people aged 46 or more. Over a fourth of such deaths were caused by diabetes. Hypertension has been reported as the main comorbidity of a third of the 14,009 deaths. Calcutta logged seven and North 24-Parganas eight.Д¬omorbidities were attributed to 14,009 (70 per cent) of the total deaths. On Friday, thirteen of the stateвЂ™s 23 districts reported zero deaths. The first death caused by the infection had been recorded on March 23, 2020, Calcutta and North 24-Parganas, taken together, accounted for over 52 per cent of the deaths. The stateвЂ™s death toll from Covid-19 went past 20,000 to touch 20,013 on Friday. There were also 8,687 recoveries and 28 deaths, which along with the fresh infections, resulted in a rise by 13,930 in the total of active cases. Long-short equity hedge funds lagged behind the market by nearly 5 percentage points last month, according to Bank of America.In the 24-hour period till 9am on Friday, the state logged 22,645 infections, including 6,867 from Calcutta. The ability to short stocks, on the other hand, did not help, as only less than 25% of the S&P 500 companies posted a negative return in October. Small-cap active funds also performed well in October, with 59% of them beating the вЂњThe meme stock craze highlights the growing influence of noninstitutional traders and new portfolio risks for both long and short investors,вЂќ wrote Christopher Harvey, senior equity analyst at Wells Fargo, in a Wednesday note.ДЄs large-cap growth funds struggle, value managers fared better thanks to their general overweight in the energy sector-71% outperformed theД«enchmark in October. (GME) could skyrocket more than 1,000% within days and lose just as much shortly after, bringing unprecedented volatilities to funds that own these names. TheД®xchange-traded fund (ARKK), for example, can attribute 40% of its October gains to Tesla, thanks to its 10% weight in the stock. As the stock market becomes more concentrated, a fundвЂ™s position in mega caps like Tesla and Microsoft can sometimes become the вЂњmake or breakвЂќ factor for its performance-regardless of its other choices.

Only 9% of large-cap growth funds beat the benchmark, the lowest rate since July 2002.Дramatic performance of a single stock has become a significant contributor to the relative return of active funds this year. Growth managers are net underweight both stocks by 13% and 26%, respectively. Microsoft and Tesla alone contributed more than one third of the indexвЂ™s return, according to Bank of America analyst Savita Subramanian. Large-cap growth funds struggled the most, as theД«enchmark returned 8.7% in October, making it hard to match.

Tesla alone has lifted the index by roughly 1 percentage point last month. Shares of the electric car maker returned 43.7% in October to surpass $1 trillion market cap, and now rank as the fourth-largest stock in the Part of the underperformance can be attributed to active fundsвЂ™ general underweight in surging names like

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