Daily new Covid infections in the city have not declined for several weeks now and with the threat of omicron looming the numbers could see a sharp surge if Covid protocols are not maintained, said health officials and public health experts.
In the last 10 days, 1,856 new Covid cases were reported from Kolkata, with the daily new infections staying between 160 and 217 on most days.
Data published on the Union health ministry’s website, updated till 8am on Saturday, showed that Bengal had the third highest number of active cases in the country after Kerala and Maharashtra. Active cases mean the number of people who have not crossed the mandatory isolation period and testing positive for Covid.
The website also showed that the positivity rate of Covid tests was 5.62 between December 11 and 17. The positivity rate is the number of tests giving positive results out of every 100 tests conducted.
A seven-year-old boy who came from Abu Dhabi with his family and is now in Malda’s Kaliachak is the only person to have tested positive for the omicron variant in Bengal.
A 69-year-old man who came from Nigeria on Monday and tested positive for Covid on Tuesday has been admitted to a private hospital in south Calcutta. “His sample has been collected by the School of Tropical Medicine and will be sent for genome sequencing on Monday,” said Ajay Chakraborty, the director of health services of Bengal government’s health department. Genome sequencing will help determine whether the man has been infected by the omicron variant.
The man is doing well. His wife came with him and has tested negative. “Only his driver and another person came in contact with him. The samples of these two will be collected on Sunday,” said Chakraborty.
Public health experts said they were worried the highly transmissible omicron variant could rapidly infect a large number of people very soon if protocols were not maintained.
“Europe is reeling under the impact of omicron. Past experiences show that we have experienced the surge a few weeks after the surge in Europe. We should immediately start exercising restraint. Or things may go out of control,” said public health expert Abhijit Chowdhury, a member of the Bengal government’s Covid task force.
“If we drop our guard and celebrate Christmas and New Year, it could spell disaster. We have to maintain all Covid protocols. Only the measures will protect us.”
According to the state health department’s Covid bulletin published on Friday, there were 2,287 active Covid cases in Bengal.
“Since Kolkata is a metropolitan city where a large number from other places come to work, the number of infections will be higher than other places. The absolute number of cases in Kolkata is still quite low. Within our state, Kolkata has the highest number of infections,” said a senior official of the state health department.
