Complete lockdown would not be enforced in West Bengal on 28 August so as to avoid the five-day closure of banking services in the last week of this month.

The remaining dates for the state-wide complete lockdown on 20 August (Thursday), 21 August (Friday), 27 August (Thursday) and 31 August (Monday) remain unchanged.

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According to an official of the state secretariat, banks are closed on Saturday and Sunday as well as on the days of complete lockdown. “In the last week of August, complete lockdown had been announced on Thursday, Friday and Monday. If lockdown was enforced as per this schedule then banks would have remained shut for five days from Thursday to Monday. This would have posed a lot of problems for people,” he said.

An order in this regard was issued by state chief secretary Rajiva Sinha today. “…several communications have been received citing difficulty to conduct of business and banking operations because of two-day lockdown during Thursday and Friday in the last week of August 2020 followed by one-day lockdown on the following Monday. Whereas, state government has considered the requests for relaxation of lockdown as would be necessary and essential,” said the notification.

Initially the lockdown was scheduled for nine days in August which was later revised to seven days. Now, with the withdrawal of the lockdown on 28 August, it would be enforced on six days during the month.

Meanwhile, Bengal continued to record a steep spike in Covid cases, registering 2,936 fresh cases and 54 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the total case count to 1,04,326 and death toll to 2,203.

Kolkata recorded 619 fresh cases and 19 deaths, North 24- Parganas 589 cases and 13 deaths while Howrah and South 24-Parganas recorded 272 and 255 new cases respectively. In the last 24 hours, 2,725 Covid patients were discharged from hospitals.

There are now 26,003 active cases in the state. The current bed occupancy rate is 36.57 per cent with 7469 out of 11775 beds in Covid designated government hospitals being vacant.

There are 1,735 people in 106 safe homes, 2,703 people in government quarantine centres and 28,838 people in home quarantine.

Nabanna would remain closed on 13 and 14 August to sanitise the premises.