Packed Relief Camps Face Ticking Corona Bomb

Rapid spread looms as taking Covid precautions become nearly impossible. Even several quarantine centres are now being used for Amphan relief in states

- Indrajit Kundu in Kolkata and Mohammad Suffian

At Kadampukur village on the outskirts of Kolkata in North 24 Pargana district, 55-year-old Bhupati Naskar was picking up pieces from the ruins of his tea stall. Its tin roof blown off, the little bamboo structure was ravaged by Thursday night’s cyclone. It was his only source of livelihood.

With no shelter above their head, for many like him staying at home means spending nights at a relief shelter or under the open sky. Thousands have made a beeline at shelter homes across East Midnapore, North and South 24 Pargana districts. While 86 people have died so far, according to initial government estimates, 10.5 lakh houses have been damaged affecting more than 1 crore people in south Bengal.

The Bengal government claims around 5 lakh people were evacuated to safer locations and kept in makeshift camps or cyclone shelters. Many of these shelters were already turned into quarantine centres for suspected Covid patients or for isolating migrants returning to Bengal from other states.

With the sudden calamity at hand, precautions against Covid are the last thing on these cyclone victims’ mind. Already stretched by the Covid pandemic, the state administration had no choice but to pack in most people in those shelters alongside schools being converted into shelters overnight.