Bengal sends teams to plug gaps in containment zones of three districts

Hooghly and South 24-Parganas, two districts in south Bengal which have registered a sharp spike in Covid-19 cases over the past one week, are fast turning out to be major concerns for the West Bengal government.

Additionally, there are the red zone districts of Kolkata, Howrah and North 24-Parganas that have set the alarm bells ringing. Out of the 1,786 cases reported till May 9, 85% of the cases were registered in these three red zone districts. Another red zone district, East Midnapore, has registered a decline in containment areas.

“While the number of containment zones in South 24-Parganas has shot up from one to 30 in the past one week, the number of positive Covid-19 cases in Hooghly has shot up from 40 to 71 in the last one week,” said a senior official of the state government who was not willing to be named.

This has prompted the state government to deploy three expert teams in the districts of North 24-Parganas, Hooghly and South 24 Parganas to identify gaps in containment zones of the three districts. Along with Kolkata and Howrah, cases are being reported on a daily basis from these three districts. 

“Each team will have four doctors, all experts in community medicine. The team will look into quality control and supervise the teams that are already deployed in containment areas. Increase in containment areas and rise in Covid figures in a district are an indication that there could be some gaps in containment zones. The expert teams will try to find out these gaps,” said the official.

The teams will check whether samples of high-risk patents, SARI (Severe Acute Respiratory Infection) patients and ILI (influenza-like illnesses) patients are being tested, identify clusters from weekly reports and comment on the measures in containment areas, the official said.

There are at least 566 containment zones in the state. Out of them, Kolkata has 326 containment areas. North 24-Parganas, with 92 such areas, comes next, followed by Howrah with 76 containment areas. South 24-Parganas and Hooghly have 30 and 23 zones, respectively.

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