Now that the last and the eight phase of Assembly polls is finishing today, West Bengal needs to go into a mission mode to tackle the surge in Covid-19 pandemic. Last night’s report puts the active cases in the State at 1,00,615.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi while urging voters to enrich the festival of democracy asked them to follow the Covid-19 protocols. His tweet read: “Last phase of the 2021 West Bengal elections takes place today. In line with the Covid-19 protocols, I call upon people to cast their vote and enrich the festival of democracy.”

Many have suggested that West Bengal is sitting on a Covid-19 time bomb with Assembly elections spread over eight phases and none of the political parties ensuring adherence to the prescribed precautions of social distancing and avoiding large gatherings.

A report in Business Line states that almost all the variants of Covid-19 virus are present in the State.

Quoting Shahid Jameel, a noted virologist and Director of Trivedi School of Biosciences at Ashoka University it said: “West Bengal, which is a scene of action in more sense than one, has pretty much all the variants of concern around. It has UK variant, Indian variant, South African variant, and Brazilian variant. As a virologist I really believe that West Bengal is something to look to because I think with the type of crowds assembling there, the future of the pandemic doesn’t look to be a happy one.”

Currently reporting the highest growth rate in Covid-19, West Bengal according to a presentation made by the Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan this Monday, showed that cases in the State were growing at a rate of 9.5 per cent.

Making a pertinent observation in a webinar Jameel said it is a misnomer to call the Indian variant as double or triple mutant, as it has 15 different mutations, except that there are two key mutations in the receptor binding region. This allows the virus to become more infectious and also possibly evade some antibody response.

“The third mutation (thus called triple mutant) that everybody was talking about is actually present there in another region of the spike protein, and this allows the virus enter (human) cells more effectively,” he said. This mutant right now is present in 16 States in the country, he said.

Given the grave situation that West Bengal is facing, many have suggested that the State needs to be proactive and get its act together to avoid the situation being faced by Delhi and Maharashtra.

Kolkata needs to go in for a lockdown. Considered as the epicentre of the pandemic in the State, the Capital is seeing a very high positivity rate of nearly 40 per cent. This means that restrictions on the movement of people is a must, ensuring that they stay indoors. Besides some other areas too need complete lockdown like Barrackpore in North 24 Parganas district and Rajarhat New Town, the adjoining areas of Kolkata.

There is an urgent need to increase testing. This has not been increased since last September 14, when 47,500 tests were done. With four times the number of daily cases being reported, the number of tests conducted remains almost the same.

In order to assess the correct picture, the daily testing capacity needs to be one lakh.

There is an urgent need to increase the oxygen supply and the number of beds. By bringing in the DRDO and other organisations, the State has to ramp up its bed capacity, ICUs and hospitals with oxygen facilities.

In order to check oxygen shortage which could take within no time once the admissions in the hospitals go up, the State has to install new oxygen generation plants. Besides, increasing the number of oxygen tankers, making arrangement of Oxygen Express trains and coordination with the Indian Air Force for airlifting of tankers to and from other oxygen surplus States, have to be done on a priority basis.

West Bengal’s neighbouring States like Jharkhand and Odisha, have enough oxygen plants too.

The vaccination drive needs to go full blast in order to contain the spread of the pandemic. With the age group of 18 to 44 years permitted to be vaccinated from May 1, the State needs to have sufficient doses in advance. While the Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee had stated that Rs.100 crore had been allocated for the fresh drive, experience of other States show that it may not be enough.