Kolkata, March 20 (TIWN) It's turning out to be a horror story of administrative laxity and an utter contempt of social responsibility at the way a senior West Bengal Home Ministry official serially ignored - or was allowed to ignore - all coronavirus prevention protocols as she roamed the streets, crowded places and the seat of the state government with her teenage son, now confirmed as the state's first Covid-19 patient, turning down repeated requests from doctors to hospitalise him.

There is now panic at the Secretariat Nabanna with the Home Secretary and the Director General of Police (DGP) entering isolation – the University of Calcutta, one state-run hospital as also a South Kolkata shopping mall, besides the posh housing society where the family resides, not to mention the large number of support staff or man on the streets who stand at grave risk of the disease that has claimed around 9,000 lives across the globe.  With Calcutta University Vice-Chancellor Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee happening to be the Home Secrerary’s wife, she has also gone into quarantine. There was anxiety in the academic circles also, as she had on Tuesday attended a meeting where Education Minister Partha Chatterjee and VCs of other universities were also present.  But that’s not all.

The Oxford University student’s father, a noted child specialist himself, is also facing criticism for ‘paying scant regard’ to medical ethics as he travelled to a municipality, about 100 km from the city, called on district officials and examined patients after allegedly meeting his son.  A chronological account of the events brings out, what many are calling, a saga of monumental blunders.  It all started with the teenager returning to Kolkata on March 15 from London, days after he attended a birthday party on March 6 where he danced with a girl who later tested positive for coronavirus.