On the 17th of July, the West Bengal Government announced an extension to the ban on flight services from 6 cities.
The ban began from the 6th of July and was initially scheduled till the 19th of July.
However, considering the rise of the Novel Coronavirus cases, the State Government decided to extend the ongoing ban till the 31st of July.
The decision was taken by Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, in order to prevent the spread of the Novel Coronavirus or COVID-19 infection.
The six cities from where flights would not land in Kolkata are: Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Chennai and Ahmedabad.
Earlier, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) wrote to the Union Civil Aviation Ministry and asked for their permission to ban flight services from these 6 cities.
India resumed domestic passenger flights from May 25, after a gap of two months following the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown. Scheduled international passenger flights are still suspended in India.
The West Bengal Government also imposed a partial lockdown in the containment zones and buffer zones to prevent the spread of the virus and control the situation. The lockdown was imposed from the 9th of July. The State Government did not announce for how many days, the imposed lockdown in containment zones would continue.
Meanwhile, till the 18th of July, West Bengal recorded 38,011 cases of the Novel Coronavirus.
Out of the total cases, 14,709 are active cases, 22,253 recovered and 1,049 deceased.
The State Government conducted as many as 6,76,348 tests till date.
According to the official report, the majority of cases were from Howrah, North 24 Parganas and Kolkata.
Stay tuned for further updates.
