“Bengal Has Highest Coronavirus Death Rate”: Mamata Banerjee Gets Centre’s Memo

New Delhi:

West Bengal has the best price of COVID-19 fatalities, low testing and worrying cases of assaults on frontline staff preventing the coronavirus disaster, the Union Home Ministry mentioned on Wednesday in a sharply-worded letter to the Mamata Banerjee-led state authorities.

“The response to COVID-19 in the state of West Bengal is characterised by a very low rate of testing in proportion to the population, and a very high rate of mortality of 13.2 per cent for the state, by far the highest for any state,” the central authorities mentioned.

“This is a reflection of poor surveillance, detection and testing in the state. There is also a need to increase random testing in crowded clusters,” Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla mentioned in a two-page letter to West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha.

“Lockdown violations have been noted in the cities of Kolkata and Howrah by specific groups in specific localities with media reports of the ‘corona warriors’ including even the police being attacked,” the letter mentioned.

“Instances of problems faced due to ostracism of health care professionals and lack of quarantine facilities is also worrying,” it added.

The Home Secretary mentioned cases of overcrowding in markets with poor sanitation, free motion of individuals in massive numbers with out masks, bathing of individuals in rivers, individuals enjoying cricket and soccer, severe lapses in imposing lockdown measures in containment zones, rickshaws allowed on roads with none restriction are grave violation of lockdown directions and social distancing norms.

These are all examples of poor supervision and implementation of crowd-control measures by district authorities, he mentioned.

Mr Bhalla wrote the letter following studies submitted by two Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs), which had been despatched to Kolkata and Jalpaiguri districts on April 20 and returned on Monday.

The groups have extensively toured a complete of seven districts within the state and have communicated their observations on occasion to the state authorities, he mentioned.

Responding to the costs, Trinamool Congress MP Shantanu Sen mentioned, “This is most unfortunate A Union secretary has written a letter full of lies. Why are you playing the communal card with reference to specific groups. Which group do you mean? Why don’t you specify?”

“How many PPEs (Personal Protective Equipment) have you given to Bengal? all you have done is come and sprinkled flowers on the heads of doctors. The letter is an insult to all those fighting against COVID-19 in West Bengal,” he added.

West Bengal has registered 1,344 coronavirus instances together with 140 deaths and 364 individuals who have recovered, the Union Health Ministry’s newest bulletin mentioned on Wednesday.

The centre and the Mamata Banerjee authorities have been locked in a bitter face-off over the coronavirus disaster. The state has lengthy attributed a lot of the fatalities to pre-existing circumstances and launched a separate depend of deaths for COVID-19.

While the centre has accused the Mamata Banerjee authorities of dealing with of the disaster poorly and under-reporting the numbers, Bengal has countered with allegations of not sending sufficient take a look at kits and holding off on funds owed to it.