Kolkata’s first corona case triggers panic at secretariat

KOLKATA: The first COVID-19 case in Kolkata triggered a panic among the state’s highest level of bureaucracy after it was learnt that a senior IAS officer, whose son tested positive, held a series of meetings on Monday in the Nabanna, the state secretariat.

West Bengal Home Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay, who held a meeting with the IAS officer, and his wife Sonali Chakrabarty,  the vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, decided to quarantine at home from Wednesday.

The IAS officer in question, who was sent to a quarantine facility along with her husband and driver on Tuesday, had received her son at the airport on Sunday and spent over 24 hours with him before coming to the state secretariat the next day. She held meeting with the home secretary who later met the DGP, the Kolkata Police chief and the additional director general of police (law and order). The government is yet to decide whether the home secretary and the top rung of IPS officers should be quarantined.