Centre's erroneous assessment as ten red zones in Bengal, Vivek Kumar's letter to Centre

Kolkata: Bengal Health Secretary Vivek Kumar wrote a strong letter to the Centre for its "erroneous assessment" that led to identification of ten districts in the state as red zones.

Enclosing a document containing "correct classification" of districts based on set parameters of the "government of India" for categorisation of areas to fight against COVID-19, Kumar maintained in his letter to Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan that only four districts - Howrah, Kolkata, North 24-Parganas and East Midnapore- are in red zones.

But, ten districts was marked as red zones in a presentation during video conference of the Union Cabinet Secretary with all states on Thursday. In a subsequent letter of Union Health Secretary to Chief Secreataries of all states names of the districts in red, orange and green zones have been given. It shows that South 24-Parganas, Midnapore West, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong and Malda are also in red zones.

Protesting against it, Kumar has urged the Union Health Secretary to take up the matter with the concerned officials as only two COVID-19 positive cases was reported in Malda, of which last case was reported on April 28. But it has been marked as red zone.

Similarly, there were only seven and six people tested positive in Kalimpong and Darjeeling districts respectively. Dates of last positive case reported in Kalimpong and Darjeeling were April 2 and April 21 respectively. The last person tested positive in Jalpaiguri district was on April 4 and till date only five people tested positive in Jalpaiguri.

Experts raised question on assessment of the Centre stating how can Kalimpong and Jalpaiguri be in Red zone where no positive case reported in almost past one month.

Bengal government has stated that eleven districts- Kalimpong, Jalpaiguri, Murshidabad, Nadia, Darjeeling, East and Burdwan, West Midnapore, Malda, Hooghly and South 24-Parganas - are in orange zone. While eight districts - Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur, Birbhum, Bankura Purulia and Jhargram- are in green zones.