The fight against COVID-19 is going to get complicated ahead as experts have warned against the surge in infection rate and decline in air quality post the festive season in Kolkata.The people with weak lungs and chronic breathing problems will find it difficult to fight the COVID battle, said the doctors at a webinar while inaugurating Bengal Clean Air Network (Bengal CAN), a citizenship initiative against environmental degradation.This alert has come after almost eight months of recording good air quality in the state. The alert comes at a time when the inversion of temperature prevents dispersal of pollutants as lower layers of warm air, and the upper layer of cooler air on the earth’s surface traps the pollutants at breathing height, the Time Of India reported.Sanjukta Dutta, an emergency expert, pointed out the benefits of lockdown stating the fact that lung patients were doing extremely well in the clean air with or without medication. Many did not require nebulization and people with conditions of hypertension recorded normal blood pressure in the lockdown days.West Bengal Pollution Control Board chairman Kalyan Rudra said, ‘The ambient air gets routinely toxic on Diwali night, which fails to recover fully, despite a series of measures. However, source appointment study and pollutant specific remedial measures started yielding good results.’Suman Mallick, head of radiation oncology at a leading hospital has said that bad air quality is the reason behind respiratory diseases and lung cancer hence the worsening air quality post the festivals in times of COVID could be a duo which would be difficult to fight.

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