Three more persons who had tested Covid-19 positive have died in Siliguri.

A 62-year-old resident of Alipurduar district admitted in the Desun (Covid) Hospital died there yesterday. A 65year-old resident of Bagdogra had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, anemia and died in Dr Chhang’s (Covid) Hospital last night. A 38-year-old person of Sukhia Pokhari in Darjeeling also died there yesterday, sources said.

Meanwhile, Darjeeling district recorded 71 new cases, while 26 were found in the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC) area. Sources said 18 of the cases in the SMC were from areas under Darjeeling district.

Twenty-two cases were detected in Naxalbari, 12 in Matigara, seven in Kharibari and three in Phansidewa blocks. Four cases were found in areas under Kurseong Municipality, one case in Darjeeling Municipality, two at Sukna, one in Sukhia Pokhari and one in Takdah, the sources said.

Waste dumping at safe home protested

Locals of Ward 29 protested after they found waste from a safe home at the Siliguri Municipal Corporation Indoor Stadium had been dumped outside the stadium today. They said the waste could have been generated by Covid-19 patients and that it could spread infection. The locals demanded a proper waste collection and disposal system.

“Unless this is collected properly and incinerated, there remains a high risk of the infection spreading,” said a resident.

Member of the board of administrators of the SMC and coordinator of Ward 29 Saradindu Chakrabarty said the matter led to panic among the locals.

Another member of the board, Sankar Ghosh, said those non-biomedical waste had been cleaned in the morning.

55 new cases in South Dinajpur

Fifty-five new cases of Covid-19 were detected in South Dinajpur district today.The patients include people from different professions, including health workers and government employees and common people, sources said.

According to health department sources, 31 positive
reports came in from Malda, and the remaining 24 tested positive through antigen and TrueNat tests in the Balurghat hospital. With this, the Covid tally in the district has gone up to 3467. On the other hand, 2476 patients have recovered so far in the district.

Two of the fresh cases are from Balurghat town, four from Balurghat rural area, three from Harirampur block, one in Tapan block, one in Buniadpur, three from Buniadpur rural areas, four from Gangarampur block, six in Gangarampur town and eight from Kushmandi, health department officials said.

21 more in Malda

Malda recorded a dip in cases for the second day today. Only 21 positive cases were found among the 756 samples tested at the VRDL in the Malda Medical College and Hospital last night, sources said. Among them, eight cases are from Habibpur and three from Ratua I, while Chanchal I, Kaliachak II, Manikchak, Ratua II and English Bazaar had two cases each. The district now has almost 4650 cases in total with 33 deaths and over 700 active cases.

GTA help desk chief in South dies

Meanwhile, Ananta Rai of the Takdah Cantonment area in Darjeeling, who had tested positive for Covid-19 in Bangalore, died there today, sources said.

Rai had been working for an NGO there, while he was also in-charge of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Help Desk for the BangaloreKarnataka-Chennai region formed to help people from the GTA region stranded there due to the pandemic.

“During tough times since Corona hit us, there are many heroes in different parts of the country and outside who took the responsibilities upon themselves to help our fellow brothers and sisters, reached out to them whenever possible and did it all with selfless hearts.

“One such hero was our Ananta bhai, who helped people in Bangalore and Chennai on behalf of the GTA. It is heart wrenching to hear that he is no more with us. The great warrior has succumbed to corona and
breathed his last today morning,” GTA chairman Anit Thapa said.