Even as number of corona cases increased drastically in Bengal, the State Government released a new protocol banning cocktail drugs to treat corona cases “in absence of any clear directive from the Centre,” a senior State Health Department official said. The State Government also decided vaccinates all the pilgrims bound for Ganga Sagar Islands for the holy dip.
“There is no clear directive from the Centre on the use of cocktail drugs … hence the Government has presently excluded it from the list of medicines to be used for the corona patients,” the senior officialand a doctor said adding the revised protocol regarding when a patient will have to be hospitalized.
“If the patient sneezes more than 24 times per minute and one’s saturation drops below 94 then only the doctors can consider hospitalization,” the official said adding “from now on co-morbidityor beyond-sixty age will not be the only condition for hospitalization.”
The Government’s revised guidelines came at a time when the coronagraph continued to climb drastically requiring the Kolkata and Howrah Municipal Corporations to mark 27 and 22 containment zones respectively.
For North and South 24 Parganas adjoining Kolkata the authorities marked 24 and 52 containment zones, Health Departmentsources said adding “this time round we are witnessing a large numberof infections among the medical staff.”
While more than 80 doctors and nurses were infected in Calcutta Medical Colleges the figure for NRS Medical College was 70 and for the Calcutta National Medical College it was 80 again. North Bengal Medical College in Siliguri had 17 infected medical staff including 14 doctors. About 36 doctors and nurses were infected in State-runCittaranjan Seva Sadan and 24 had been infected in Dr R Ahmed DentalMedical College and Hospital, the only such government-owned facility in the State.
There was high infection rate in the police circle too with at leastsix Deputy Commissioners and two Joint Commissioners of policecontacting the disease. Lal Bazar police headquarters in Kolkata reported at least 50 cases of corona infection, sources said.
The total number of corona patients till Monday late evening was 6,128and the figure was expected to go further up on Tuesday sources said.Politicians like Babul Supriyo and his entire family were reported to be down with corona and were in home isolation.