With the Durga puja festivities coming to an end in West Bengal, the next two weeks will be crucial to keep Covid-19 cases under control in the state, health experts have warned.
The state health department is planning to ramp up testing, which had dropped during the festive season, in the coming weeks senior officials said.
“The number of RT-PCR tests had dropped to almost half during the puja. We are going to increase it now. While 39,661 tests were done on October 1, the number of tests dropped to around 21,217 on October 15. We have already starting ramping up [the number of] tests. On October 17, we conducted 27,148 tests. This will be increased further,” said a senior official of the state health department.
During the first wave of the infection last year, West Bengal recorded maximum number of Covid-19 cases on October 22, when 4,157 new cases were registered following shopping spree ahead of Durga Puja festivities.
At the peak of the second Covid wave in the state on May 14, just after the assembly elections ended this year, the daily count had shot up to 20,846. In both instances health experts blamed huge gatherings that too without adhering to safety norms for the spike.
{{/usCountry}}At the peak of the second Covid wave in the state on May 14, just after the assembly elections ended this year, the daily count had shot up to 20,846. In both instances health experts blamed huge gatherings that too without adhering to safety norms for the spike.
{{/usCountry}}“This year we saw that Covid-19 safety protocols were flouted rampantly. Pandal hoppers hit the streets in thousands with huge gatherings seen outside puja pandals. Many were not even wearing masks, forget social distancing and sanitising. The next two weeks will be very crucial,” said Sukumar Mukherjee, member of the expert committee that was set up in 2020 to advise chief minister Mamata Banerjee on pandemic-related matters.
Also Read: BJP protests after youth wing leader shot dead in Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur
Even though the high court had banned entry of visitors inside puja pandals, visitors gathered in large numbers at the barricades put up outside pandals. The police had to stop the entry of visitors in one pandal at Salt Lake, which was modelled on Burj Khalifa and became a major crowd puller. The Eastern Railway too had to cancel around 13 pairs of trains to stop people from coming to Kolkata for pandal hopping on the puja days.
“Even though there has been no surge yet but we are getting ripples with the daily Covid-19 cases increasing and falling. We need to increase our testing and keep a close watch. The coming weeks will be very crucial,” said Manas Gumta, general secretary of Association of Health Service Doctors in the state.
This becomes all the more important because the state education department has initiated the process to reopen schools and colleges. Educational institutions are likely to reopen in November. Local trains still remain cancelled.