Eight c-zones added; Alipore and Santoshpur on list – Times of India

KOLKATA: The city witnessed a rise in number of containment zones on Saturday — barely 72 hours after some areas managed to get rid of the tag. The total numbers rose to 32 from 24. While the 24 containment zones from last Thursday remained unchanged, most of the new containment areas are spread over Maniktala-Phoolbagan, added areas of Behala-Jadavpur, Chetla and Alipore.

While Santoshpur — adjoining Jadavpur — is a new entrant, the one on Judges Court Road is a surprise entrant, along with Kailash Bose Street. The Judges Court Road address was put on the containment list 10 days ago, but it got dropped from the second list. According to police, there are two portions of the building. “The earlier cases in one part of the building got resolved. The fresh case now is from the other portion,” said an officer.
Among the new entrants, only one is a slum that is located in Santoshpur. Out of the other seven, four are of mixed areas and the others are complexes. It was no wonder that the KMC on Saturday — led by state home secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, who is also the nodal officer for the city in the fight against Covid — highlighted the corporation’s achievement in tackling Covid in the slums. Bandyopadhay has asked his colleagues to use the “slum model” — that of intense door-to-door surveillance — for flats and standalone buildings, too.
The figures from the past three weeks bear testimony to the same. In the period between June 28 and July 16, about 1,400 Covid cases were reported from flats in Kolkata and another 1,200 from standalone buildings. In comparison, there are just 144 cases reported from the slums. “From now on, the KMC health workers will visit houses and sites not only with thermal scanners and pulse oximeters, but also medicines. The whole effort will focus on contact tracing whenever a fresh case is reported,” said an official.
The cops said that at present, Bhowanipore has around four containment zones, extended Behala has three, the Phoolbagan-Kankurgachi area has three more containment zones. The return of Alipore (two zones) and Chetla Road (that had previously reported a high number of cases) will keep both the KMC and police worried.
Interestingly, these changes were not only restricted to different clusters within the same area, but also spread out geographically across the city. In Bhowanipore, for example, one address in Chakrabria North managed to come out of the containment list, the one in Chakraberia South continued to remain on the list. The same pattern was visible on Sarat Bose Road too — while one containment zone wriggled out of the list (19A Sarat Bose Road), two others made an entry (6 and 46/1 Sarat Bose Road).