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Cases spike in Bengal amid election season, officials say norms flouted
The state government has ramped up testing from around 20,000 in February-end to over 26,000 now.
The daily count of Covid-19 cases in poll-bound West Bengal has shot up nine times ever since the Election Commission announced the dates for the crucial assembly elections to 294 seats on February 26, data released by the state health department showed.
The death rate, however, remained unaffected.
The number of active cases has more than doubled since March 27, when polling for the first phase was held in 30 seats. Due to the sudden spike, private hospitals are fast running out of hospital beds while the occupancy in government ones has seen a sharp rise, the daily health bulletin revealed.
Data available with the state health department showed that while only 216 new cases were reported from across the state on February 26, the daily count rose to 1,957 on April 4. The number of active cases stood at 4,608 on March 27 but increased to 10,153 on April 4.
While polling for the first two phases for 60 seats are over, six more phases are yet to be conducted. The third phase, covering 31 constituencies across three districts, will be held on Tuesday.
“With elections underway, political parties are organising public rallies and road shows everyday where thousands of people are gathering. Precautions such as social distancing and wearing masks have taken a back seat. Under such circumstances, there has been a staggering rise in Covid cases,” Sukumar Mukherjee, member of an expert committee set up in 2020 to advise chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Covid-related matters, said.
On February 26, Bengal reported three deaths while on April 4, it registered four.
Only 198 out of 6,736 beds (around 3 per cent) were occupied in government hospitals on February 26. However, the occupancy rate rose to nearly 12 per cent with 665 out of 5,604 beds booked on April 3.
The situation appeared to be worse in private hospitals. On February 26, only around 25 per cent of the 1,007 hospital beds were occupied. In the wake of the spike, hospitals gradually began to increase the number of beds and 659 out of 1,077 beds (around 61 per cent) were booked on April 3. At least 11 hospitals in and around Kolkata have run out of beds.
As witnessed in the past, maximum cases were reported from Kolkata and North 24 Parganas. Of the 1,957 infections on April 4, around 56 per cent were reported from these two districts. While the daily Covid count stood at 634 in Kolkata, it was 462 in North Parganas.
The state government has ramped up testing from around 20,000 in February-end to over 26,000 now.
“While on one hand, we need to increase our testing, we also need to go for contact tracing of the infected persons. Isolation of the infected person and a proper surveillance is very important. All these have taken a back seat along with maintaining safety protocols as a result of which, the cases are rising,” Manas Gumta, general secretary of Association of Health Service Doctors in the state, said.
