The Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation has not yet started door-to-door Covid surveillance during the second wave of infections though areas under the civic body are reporting at least 300 new cases every day.

An official in the corporation’s health department said they had not yet started door-to-door visits as many from their department were busy with election work.

During the first wave of the epidemic last year, the civic body had carried out such a surveillance.

“A number of civic officials who would have led such door-to-door monitoring of patients suffering from fever and other Covid symptoms are now on election duty. We don’t have adequate personnel at our disposal to launch such a large-scale campaign right now,” the official said.

Last year, the survey was conducted by 1,200-odd health workers. They were trained in Covid surveillance and were also told to look out for accumulated water as part of the civic body’s dengue prevention drive.

“Most of the health workers are busy sanitising Bidhannagar College, where security personnel and polling officials are camping, and other facilities involved in the ongoing polls. No additional workers have been hired on a contractual basis to carry out the surveillance,” an official in the health department said.

Residents of several blocks in Salt Lake said that even though Covid cases were on the rise, no health team from the civic body was sanitising the blocks, let alone conduct door-to-door visits.

Tapas Sengupta, the secretary of the AE Block Samaj Sangha, said no civic team had sanitised the buildings from where Covid-19 cases had been reported and the ones where Covid patients were staying in isolation.

“Civic health teams cannot be spotted though there has been a sudden surge in the number of cases,” Sengupta said.

Last year, each of the 41 wards of the civic body had been given a couple of portable sanitisation units, a civic official said.

Basudeb Basu, a DB Block resident, echoed what Sengupta said.

Soham Chakraborty, of ED Block, said no one from the corporation’s health department turned up even after a resident had died of Covid-19.

“We are living in fear as the corporation has been completely inactive,” said Chakraborty.

The area under the corporation spans around 60.5 sq km. The population, according to the latest census, is around 6.5 lakh and households total 1.46 lakh.

While wards in Rajarhat have 1.17 lakh households, Salt Lake accounts for 26,000 households.

These, however, exclude households in areas like Duttabad, Polenite,Udayanpally and areas bordering the East Calcutta Wetlands, including Khasmahal.