Kolkata: With the Covid-19 death toll going up along with a soaring infection rate, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee Wednesday ordered a ‘strict’ lockdown in all containment zones across the state for seven days.
From 5 pm Thursday, the chief minister said, businesses, offices, and all government and private establishments will remain shut in these containment zones. The West Bengal Police has already begun putting up guard rails, barricades, and bamboo structures in these zones.
Public movement will be restricted in these areas and no non-essential services allowed.
The government actions are in stark contrast to its earlier attitude — West Bengal was among the very few states that had allowed relaxations for non-essential services and had eased lockdown rules as early as mid-April, barely two weeks into the nationwide shutdown.
The latest decision is a result of the deteriorating Covid situation in the state. As of Thursday, West Bengal has recorded a total of 24,823 cases with 827 deaths. The state’s discharge rate has also dropped from 66.30 per cent in 5 July to 65.62 per cent as of Thursday.
Districts such as Malda and Darjeeling, which had very few cases, are now emerging as state hotspots with a caseload of 954 and 716, respectively.
The state’s main government and private hospitals are also running out of beds even as the government has reduced testing. From 11,053 samples tested on 3 July, the number fell to 10,386 on 7 July, according to the government’s Covid bulletin published on 8 July.
Also read: Kolkata is fast running out of hospital beds as Covid cases soar, mortality rate near 6%
Only clusters shut: Mamata
Asking people not to panic about the fresh lockdown rules, Banerjee had Wednesday clarified that the administration has carved out small localities and streets where there are clusters of Covid-19 infections.
“It is not an overall lockdown like the initial days. We are imposing strict restrictions to arrest the infection in some areas in specific areas,” she said in Kolkata. “The areas or streets where caseloads are very high would have to be shut completely. The administration will deliver supplies there if required.”
According to the chief minister, respective district administration and commissionerates will decide, determine specific areas and upload the containment lists on the government website. Those areas will remain shut for at least seven days until they become ‘clean zones’ once again.
As of Thursday morning, the government had uploaded a list for three districts — Kolkata, Howrah and North 24 Paraganas — with 25, 56 and 95 containment zones, respectively. These three districts have maximum caseloads, with Kolkata recording 8,046 cases and 444 deaths and North 24 Paraganas 4,353 cases and 144 deaths. Howrah is struggling with 3,398 cases and 114 deaths. Containment zones in other districts will be added shortly, the government said, also clarifying that these containment zones are dynamic and will be refreshed as and when the caseload changes.
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‘Lockdown never happened here initially’
The government’s latest actions have earned it the ire of the opposition, which is accusing the Mamata administration of lacking a plan to deal with the pandemic.
The opposition is referring to the early days of the nationwide lockdown when the chief minister allowed sweetmeat shops, flower markets, and wholesale markets to open. Later, she allowed 70 per cent of the workforce in government and private offices. At the end of May and in early June, she announced further relaxations.
During the first month into the lockdown, the Ministry of Home Affairs had written a series of letters to the West Bengal government pointing out the lockdown violations and unnecessary relaxations for non-essential services.
“There is so much confusion about containment zones and the lockdown. Lockdown never happened here initially,” CPI(M) MP Mohammed Salim said. “Now when things are going out of hand, she announces a lockdown in a phased manner. There were also so many zones created earlier. There were zones like containment, buffer and clean zones. Then zones like A, B, C, D. Everything was convoluted, leaving people utterly confused.”
The BJP too has little sympathy for the chief minister. “The chief minister does not know what she wants to do. Once she said, let the lockdown stay, before that she unlocked everything,” the state BJP president Dilip Ghosh said. “What did she mean? It is a state of doldrums.”
On her part, Banerjee has blamed the central government for the increase in Covid infection in the state. Her government had objected to migrant special trains, demanded restrictions on special trains and later barred domestic flight movement from hotspot cities and states, including Delhi and Mumbai.
As the numbers have risen, her team of doctors are working round the clock. Between 3 July and 8 July, an expert committee on the Covid-19 treatment protocol management team has issued at least seven advisories to hospitals, instructing them about treatment and ways to minimise mortality.
“West Bengal is still better than many other states,” said a senior virologist, who worked with the government. “But we would have done even better had we complied with the lockdown rules strictly during the initial days. The caseload is also due to the homebound migration.”
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