Kolkata: The South 24-Parganas district administration has decided to come up with seven safe homes across the district for lodging and treating of asymptomatic and mild symptomatic Covid patients who do have facilities of remaining in home quarantine due to paucity of space.
The South 24-Parganas ranks fourth among the districts when it comes to the number of positive cases behind Kolkata, North 24-Parganas and Howrah.
A source in the district Health department said places selected for the safe houses include the Karmatirtha at Bhojali area under Bhangar Block II, the Krishak Bazar at Baruipur, BBT Bhavan at Budge Budge Block I, the mother and child hub at Canning Block I, Karmatirtha at Gosaba and two other places — both at Diamond Harbour. As per plans, the district administration will have 630 beds in these seven safe homes. There will be 50 beds on an average in each of these safe houses while the one at Budge Budge will have 200 beds.
The Canning and Gosaba safe houses will take a reasonable time to be readied while the remaining five will start functioning soon.
Currently, there are eight safe houses in the district and 166 patients are lodged there.
The total number of active Covid positive cases in the district as per the health bulletin of July 23 is 1,457 and the number of deaths is 61.
The Rajpur-Sonarpur municipality area that shares its boundary with Kolkata has the highest number of Covid positive cases in the district with the count being nearly 450. The positive cases under Maheshtala Municipality are also over 150.
Among the blocks, Magrahat II has more than 150 positive cases while Bhangar II block has over 100 positive cases.