Rising Covid-19 cases across the Siliguri civic area has prompted the Trinamul-run board of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) to launch “Duare Vaccine,” an initiative to administer senior citizens of the city the booster dose on their doorstep.
Representatives of the SMC said mobile camps had been organised in different wards of the city to provide the precautionary dose to senior citizens aged 60 years and above, completely free of cost.
“The camps to provide booster doses are conducted to vaccinate senior citizens, who can’t afford to go to the district hospital, the medical college or health centres for some reason or other,” said Ranjan Sarkar, the deputy mayor.
According to him, the initiative started in June-end and so far carried out in seven wards. “In all, 584 people have been administered the precautionary dose so far under Duare Vaccine,” he added.
Doctors at North Bengal Medical College & Hospital and officials of Darjeeling district health administration said the situation is not alarming, but precautions are a must.
“A sentinel surveillance has been on since July 6 to figure out the exact number of Covid-19 patients. Though the situation is not alarming in the district, our employees, in association with local bodies, are visiting every household and asking people to get completely vaccinated so that the case count remains low,” said Tulsi Pramanik, the chief medical officer of health of Darjeeling district.
Since July 1, there have been four Covid deaths in the district. At the NBMCH in Siliguri, 17 beds have been kept aside for Covid patients. “As of now, 14 patients are hospitalised,” said Sanjay Mallick, the NBMCH superintendent.
Bengal on Wednesday reported 2,979 new Covid-19 infections, 1,359 recoveries and four deaths. Currently, there are 27,496 active cases in the state.
The neighbouring state of Sikkim has also seen a steady spike in Covid cases in the past fortnight, with health authorities cautioning people against lowering their guard and urging them to follow all Covid safety protocols like wearing of masks, social distancing and use of hand sanitisers.
In the 24 hours preceding 8am on Wednesday, the state recorded 68 new cases, taking the active cases to 310 from zero in the last week of May.
Pempa T. Bhutia, the director general-cum-secretary of Sikkim health department, said authorities had never declared the pandemic was over. “We had stated that the fourth Covid wave was expected during June-July…. We appeal to people to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour....” he said.
Bhutia said this surge could be of the omicron variant, but can only be ascertained after genome sequencing of samples. Around 40 samples will be sent to National Institute for Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani in Bengal for genome sequencing, he said.
