COVID-19: West Bengal Managing the Numbers

The Health Minister of West Bengal is Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. According to her, “Government is not god. The Bengal government is not a magician... But it is a government that works hard, gives free rations, money for scholarships, weddings, pensions. How much more can we do? We need some cooperation.”  
With 62,964 total confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2,134 new cases on July 28, West Bengal’s caseload is increasing rapidly. 8.39 lakh samples have been tested for COVID-19.

In response, the Chief Minister has announced that August 16, 23, and 30 will be complete lockdowns across the state. And, she said, that there will be lockdowns on August 5, 8, 17 and 24. Banerjee said that she aims to ramp up tests to 17,000 per day.

Right from the word go, West Bengal’s tryst with COVID-19 has been dramatic. In March an 18-year-old boy  was found to be infected by the novel coronavirus. He had just returned home from London. Soon it was discovered that he was the son of a senior bureaucrat and along with his mother had visited the state secretariat and other senior officials. He had even been to malls and other social gatherings in violation of quarantine norms. A livid chief minister chastised everyone in public. The incident spurred Ms. Banerjee on to begin the lockdown a day before the national lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Ever since, there has been a lot of sound and fury, with little impact, and the numbers in Kolkata and across the state have risen steadily. The West Bengal government has been criticised for its low testing rates as well as hiding data and under-reporting deaths due to COVID-19 by classifying them as due to co-morbidities.

The government in a July 2 order said people not in “compliance of norms of physical distancing and wearing of masks shall attract penal action as per law…. Anybody found in public places or on road without wearing masks shall forthwith be asked to wear masks and in failure to do so should be sent back. However, necessary penal action should be taken for repeat offenders.”

The government has claimed that the state has more than 10,000 beds in government hospitals. It claimed that 83 COVID-19 hospitals had been readied, 28 of them being government establishments and 55 private.
Pointing a finger at the Centre, Mamata Banerjee has said that the state government had spent Rs. 2,500 crore so far, but has received only Rs.125 crore from the NHM (National Health Mission). She also said that the state is yet to receive dues of Rs. 53,000 crore from the Centre, nor has it received the Rs. 4,135 crore as GST compensation for April-May. She has demanded that the Centre allow the states to borrow more money by raising the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) limits.

The government said that  in the state,  treatment for COVID-19 is free and the rates in private hospitals have been fixed at Rs. 2,250 for the test, Rs. 1,000 for doctor’s consultation, while a PPE kit costs Rs.1,000.

Despite Ms. Mamata Banerjee’s claims and protestations her government has had to contend with reports like this one in The Hindu which says, for instance, that many designated hospitals show “100% vacancy”, ostensibly because they “do not yet have the infrastructure to treat COVID-19 patients and merely figure in the list of designated hospitals to add to the numbers.” Recently, an 18-year-old boy was denied admission in a few hospitals citing lack of beds but when he was finally admitted at the Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, it was found that there were three empty beds. Th boy died the same evening.
The pandemic is clearly out of control in the State, the health infrastructure and planning is poor, but the government spends its time blaming the Centre for its own lapses.