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Bengal to upgrade crematoriums, take stock of hearse vans as Covid-19 toll mounts
The daily death toll of Covid-19 victims touched 73 on Tuesday, almost 25 times higher than what it was on February 26, when the Election Commission of India announced the assembly polls in West Bengal.
On April 20 when Bholanath Pal, a resident of Singur in Hooghly district died after being detected with Covid-19, his body was left for nearly 18 hours in his house before it could be cremated.
“After being detected with Covid-19 on April 17, he had to be kept in home isolation as we couldn’t arrange a bed in any hospital. He died. Later repeated phone calls to the district administration to help us for the cremation went unanswered. We had to wait for 18 hours before help arrived,” said Babin Pal, the victim’s son.
It was not a stray incident. Reports of such cases, where families of Covid-19 victims are facing harassment even after the death of their kin, have started to pour in almost every day.
In the face of an exponential rise in the death toll over the past few weeks, the West Bengal government has directed district administrations to augment infrastructure at crematoriums, appointing a nodal officer who would coordinate the cremation process and take stock of the fleet of hearse vans among others.
“It has to be ensured that bodies are disposed preferably within three hours and for this each block and subdivision has been asked to appoint a nodal officer who would get in touch with the victims’ families and coordinate the entire cremation process,” said a senior official.
The district administrations have been directed to identify areas where more deaths were taking place and categorise them in three categories – A, B and C with A getting the top priority.
“Officials have been asked to augment the infrastructure at crematoriums and burial grounds, augment man power, and find new spaces for burial. Also they have been asked to take stock of hearse vans, both government and private among others,” said the official
The daily death toll of Covid-19 victims touched 73 on Tuesday, almost 25 times higher than what it was on February 26, when the Election Commission of India announced the assembly polls in West Bengal.
The daily count of Covid-19 cases has shot up 75 times in the state. On Tuesday, the state registered 16,403 new cases up from 216 on February 26. The positivity rate -- the proportion of people testing positive to those tested – has also shot up from 1% to nearly 30% during the same period.
Kolkata registered the maximum deaths – 24, followed by North 24 Parganas where 13 people died on Tuesday. The three crematoriums in the city, meant for Covid-19 victims, are all stressed and the civic body is looking to augment infrastructure by designating more crematoriums for Covid-19 victims.
“If you go by official figures, then 50% of the victims dying every day in the city are cremated at the crematorium at Dhapa in east Kolkata, while the rest are sent to the other two crematoriums at Nimtala and Birjunala. But, actually the numbers are much higher. All the furnaces are burning constantly, and the crematorium staff are all overworked,” said a senior official of the Kolkata civic body.
