11 areas added to containment list, Kolkata total now stands at 37 – Times of India

KOLKATA: A day after the list was updated, another 11 areas have been marked as containment zones on Friday. The new entrants have taken the count of containment zones to 37, the highest in the past month. And most of the new zones are in pockets which have had consistent presence on the list earlier — most importantly Ballygunge, Bhowanipore, Beliaghata and Behala. According to the police and KMC, the entry of some of these zones is part of the larger strategy to lockdown portions of the worst-affected areas, part by part, to contain the disease instead of doing so at one go.
A complex in Rowland Row, off Lansdowne, is located close to Elgin Road and Sarat Bose Road, which have had multiple containment zones. Though two complexes on Sarat Bose Road are out of the list, at least one containment zone still exists on Elgin Road. The belt now has four containment zones.

Similarly, Kankurgachhi or Barwaritala Road and Suren Sarkar Road in Beliaghata have had complexes moving in and out of the list. The new ones are close to the Loknath Mandir. There are at least three slums in this area, along with Gobindapur in the south. So far, the administration has taken drastic measures to contain the virus in certain slum pockets.
Sakherbazar, which had gone off the list two weeks ago, is back on. The area is barely a couple of kilometres away from two other containment zones in Purba Barisha in east Behala. Kadapara, too, is back on the list after being struck off barely a week ago.
A new entrant to the list is Dent Mission Road in Kidderpore, along with Taratala Road. Police said Kidderpore had the maximum number of smaller containment zones about a month-and-a-half ago. “We hoped the situation had changed, but the fresh containment zone in the area is an indication that we need to be patient,” said a civic official.
There are now five slums on the list and 12 complexes. One is a market complex. The rest of the 19 zones are a mixture of stand-alone flats, houses and shops. “The fact is that we now know areas that need intervention — while Mukundapur-Patuli-Baghajatin is one, with south suburban Kolkata reporting over 500 active cases, the Ultadanga-Phoolbagan-Beliaghata belt is another. In Bhowanipore and Ballygunge, the focus is likely to stay on the apartments,” said an officer. Other areas which remain a challenge are Alipore, east Behala and Narkeldanga-Beniapukur.
A slum on Motilal Basak Lane in Ultadanga had reported a high number of Covid patients for the past 10 days. “You can’t force the slum dwellers to abide by all rules as they lack utilities. All we can do is make them aware of the necessity of following hygiene and abide by social distancing norms — as far as possible due to dearth of space. This apart, random sample tests and sanitization were also carried out at the slum,” said borough coordinator Anindya Kishore Routh. However, he maintained that now the KMC and cops will need to keep a constant vigil so that no fresh Covid case is reported here.