Battling pandemic: Alapan Bandyopadhyay becomes the nodal officer of Kolkata

Kolkata: The state government on Monday changed the nodal officers for Kolkata, Howrah, North and South 24-Parganas to tackle COVID-19 situation where the number of infected cases is the highest in the state.

Home Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay has been given the charge of nodal officer of Kolkata. Earlier, IAS officer Sanjay Thade was the city's nodal officer.

Rajesh Pandey, Secretary of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Textiles Department, has been given the responsibility of nodal officer to check the spread

of the disease in Howrah

where Sharad Trivedi was supervising the overall situation.

Land Revenue Commissioner Manoj Pant has been made the nodal officer of North 24-Parganas while Additional Chief Secretary of Public Works Department (PWD) Naveen Prakash

has been made the nodal officer of South 24-Parganas where earlier Binod Kumar,

Commissioner of KMC, was in charge.

This comes when almost half of the total COVID-19 deaths in the state were reported from Kolkata and at present the highest number of active cases in the state is in the city itself.

At present there are 3,795 active cases in Kolkata with 227 getting infected to the disease in the past 24 hours.

So far 980 people died in the state due to COVID-19

and it includes 519 in Kolkata itself.

Similarly, in Howrah 101 people tested positive in the past 24 hours and at present there are 1,247 active cases in the state. The containment zones in the district went up to 85 on Monday that was 56 on Thursday. In Kolkata at present the containment zones

are 28.

Though there is no increase in containment zones in North 24-Parganas and it remained 95 since Thursday, now the target of the state government is to bring the situation in the district under control as there are at present 2,690 active cases with 225 tested positive in the past 24 hours.

So far 172 people died in the district due to COVID-19 with the disease claiming 8 lives on Monday.

As per the Health department's bulletin, atleast 1435 people tested positive in the past 24 hours and

632 people were released after getting cured from the

disease.