COVID 19 death toll in Bengal touches 50

Kolkata,04 May(HS): After remaining silent for nearly  three days, the West Bengal government here today announced that since 1 May altogether 17 more people had lost their lives in COVID – 19 in the state taking their overall toll from 33 to 50 today with another 41 people getting affected by the disease during the last 24 hours to take their number to over 625 so far.

In spite of the strict implementation of the lockdown the number of those getting affected by the killer disease has been increasing day by day causing serious concern to the state  health department.

Among the 41 people who tested Corona positive during the past 24 hours were two doctors and four nurses of different hospitals forcing the authorities  to start their treatment immediately in the middle  of a major scarcity of frontline warriors in the state besides closing down other services in these hospitals as a preventive measure.

According to state Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha, over 85 per cent of 17 more people died of COVID-19 in the state, were from the 10 districts under Red Zone, while the rest were from the some of the five districts under Orange zone. As a result, the authorities  had immediately swung into action and cordoned off the entire affected areas  to prevent  the residents from leaving their homes  unnecessarily.

Meanwhile, following the introduction of  several more relaxation in terms of opening of small businesses in Green and Orange zones of the state along with rest of India  from today, long queues were  seen  in front of most of the liquor shops in Bengal including some even in Red Zones without caring and maintaining the required social distancing and violating other lockdown norms.

Though police on being informed intervened in some places, there was very little cooperation from the general public to help  implement the rules, unlike in most other parts of the state.

Most interestingly  more than 1,000 people  gathered  in front of a liquor shop near the  residence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at Harish Chatterjee Street  at Kalighat area in South Kolkata  from early this morning  in a bid to purchase liquors at the first opportunity.

Soon after opening the shop the situation had reached such a pass that the police had to resort to lathi-charge to ward off the unruly crowd following a mad rush among the buyers.

In another similar incident at the posh Golf Green area, the police did not allow the owner of the local liquor shop to start his business because of a similarly long queue of people since early morning.

We took the decision apprehending trouble, the police said and made it clear that only a limited number of customers would be allowed to purchase liquor from tomorrow.