Community spread starts to happen in some limited areas in Nadia, 60 cops test Covid-19 positive

Community spread starts to happen in some limited areas in Nadia, 60 cops test Covid-19 positive

A senior police official said the police will have to think of ways of dealing with new challenges in maintaining law and order. Police persons need to be commended for their hard work and restraint, instead of being chastised as a force for the over zealousness and indiscretion of a few of them.

Biswabrata Goswami   

Hummingbird News                           

KRISHNAGAR, 12 AUG: The pandemic is wreaking havoc in the rank and file of the police force. A total of 60 police persons working at various police stations under Krishnagar police district in Nadia have already tested Covid-19 positive till today. 

In less than a week, as many as 27 police persons including some civic volunteers tested Covid-19 positive at Chapra police station only in Nadia. In Dhubulia police station, 14 police personnel including a few civic volunteers have tested positive. This apart, a few policemen have also tested positive for Covid-19 at different police stations across the district.

It has been revealed at a time when the district administration is struggling hard to contain the spread of the dreaded virus and set up as many as 301 containment zones till today. And this is the highest number of containment zones set up in a district across the state followed by West Midnapore and East Burdwan where the numbers of containment zone are 188 and 171 respectively.

Perhaps these are not the enough scenarios to be scared to many persons who are still defying social distancing and do not wear masks even after being repeatedly warned by the district administration and police.

The latest report from the district health department reveals that community transmission has started to happen at a few limited areas in the district. If this transmission is not contained immediately, it will be catastrophic to us, said a health department official.

At Mollapara and Ballalpara in Nabadwip, as many as 12 persons tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday while these two areas were declared as containment zones a few days ago after two persons had tested Covid positive. This implies that community transmission has started to happen to some extent in these areas. In Chapra, a few police persons tested positive for Covid-19 a few days ago and but when samples were taken from other cops, 21 policemen tested positive. This apart there are few other areas in the district where local transmission has started to happen, a health official said on condition of anonymity.

As more reports of Covid-19 positive are coming out with the increase of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT), fear and anxiety have gripped among the police persons and their family members as the affected policemen had come in contact with several persons in the last few days.

In Chapra police station, samples from around 150 policemen and others were taken of which 27 persons tested positive for Covid-19 while reports of 50 percent samples have not reached yet. The district health department is also looking for the people who came in contact with these policemen and they are ready to take samples from them.

A senior police official said the police will have to think of ways of dealing with new challenges in maintaining law and order. Police persons need to be commended for their hard work and restraint, instead of being chastised as a force for the over zealousness and indiscretion of a few of them.

Meanwhile, informed about the situation, IG (South Bengal) Rajeev Mishra and DIG (Murshidabad Range) Sunil Kumar Chowdhary had recently convened a meeting with the senior police officials in Krishnagar where they instructed them to follow some advisories to prevent any possible infections.

Bidisha Kalita, additional SP (HQ) said, “A team of officials has been formed who will monitor whether police persons follow the advisories or not. Today, we convened an online zoom-meeting with all police stations from the headquarters where we instructed them about dos and don’ts”.