The state health department has instructed private hospitals in Calcutta with infrastructure for identifying Covid infected patients not to send samples from surge communities for genome sequencing.

The latest communique from Swasthya Bhawan on Monday, barely three days after it had requested for samples from localities with a higher concentration of patients, indirectly admits that in the third wave of infections, community spread has well and truly begun.

“Now, with the fast increase of Covid cases, the number of positive samples are rising very high. So, now all are requested to stop sending general community samples for WGS for the time being. However, please continue to send samples of international travellers and special samples according to the existing guidelines,” reads the communique.

The Bengal government’s renewed attempts to restrict movement in public spaces, which came into effect from Monday with the closure of all educational institutions and closure of selected businesses and activities, comes at a time when Covid has already pushed the state to the second position in the country with over 6,003 new cases in one day, trailing Maharashtra which has the highest at over 11,000 new cases.

Swasthya Bhawan is wary of the third wave, fearing that it could take a far more severe turn than the summer of 2021, and predicts that the number of new cases per day could reach as high as 30,000-35,000. This trend, it feels, could even continue till March this year.

According to the health officials, the recorded 6, 078 new cases on Monday while the test positivity rate (TPR) was 19.59 per cent. The TPR of the state was 15.93 per cent on Sunday, January 2. Calcutta's TPR for the same day was 12 per cent. On Saturday, January 1, Calcutta had a TPR of 16 per cent. “This scare is because of the high infection rate of the Omicron variant. Also, with Covid we cannot predict what new variant will emerge,” said a health department official. Ideally, TPR should be under 1 per cent.