Bengal Doing Its Best to Contain Covid-19, Says Chief Secretary; Only 178 of 7,969 Dedicated Beds Occupied

Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha on Saturday said it will be wrong to speculate that the state government is not taking enough measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The senior officer substantiated his statement by saying of the dedicated 7,969 beds meant for positive cases in the state, only 178 are occupied.

He also backed up his statement by disclosing statistics showing that testing of patients during various intervals from the first week of April to now – the average cases is roughly 10% in most of the districts.

Addressing a press conference at the state secretariat, Sinha said 580 people were tested in Howrah and reports of nearly 10% of them came positive. "Similarly, in East Midnapore, 300 people were tested and 18 of them turned out to be COVID-19 positive. In this case also, the percentage is less than 10.”

Sinha said in 10 districts, including Kalimpong, no fresh cases of coronavirus were reported. "We are aggressively working towards its containment and we have already formed a composite team, which includes civil administration workers, health officials and police, in maintaining social distancing. On a large scale, we are more or less successful and in the coming days we will proceed towards optimal level testing," he said.

"We have planned our next course of action, which we are calling ‘micro level planning’. So there is no reason to believe we are not taking adequate measures,” he said, adding there is no technology not being used by the state government to trace, track and test.

Elaborating on micro-planning, Sinha said it is not based on municipal wards and boroughs. "Our micro-planning is based on lanes, buildings, shanties. The whole idea is to increase the number of screening and testing and taking necessary steps required. Our main objective is containment and I already had a video conference meeting with all the stakeholders regarding the containment plans,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has issued advisories to all state governments on the feasibility of using pooled samples for molecular testing of COVID-19.

Based on this, the state government issued a letter saying pooled samples will be used for screening of suspected cases.