Has fighting COVID-19 with a six-city flight ban helped West Bengal?
It was on July 4 that Mamata Banerjee called for a flight ban from six cities with a high number of COVID-19 cases. The embargo on the arrival of flights from Chennai, Delhi, Ahmadabad, Pune, Nagpur, and Mumbai, which was initially imposed for a period of 14 days from July 6, has now gone on to be extended till August 31.
West Bengal has also barred all operations at the Kolkata airport on the days of bi-weekly total lockdown. But, despite the selective flight ban, there has been no tangible reduction in the state’s COVID-19 positivity rate as per the data suggested.
On 5th July when Mamta Bannerjee announced that the flight embargo, the state had recorded 22126 cases. The states of coronavirus tally went up to 65258 on July 30. As of August 20, the state has a total of 1, 29, 119 COVID-19 cases.
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News source: Indian Express
Update by Bidisha Roy Choudhury