A powerful cyclone slammed ashore Wednesday along the coastline of India and Bangladesh, where more than 2.6 million people fled to shelters in a frantic evacuation made all the more challenging by the coronavirus pandemic.
Cyclone Amphan, the equivalent of a category 3 hurricane, was packing winds of up to 170 kilometres per hour with maximum gusts of 190 kph . Authorities warned it could cause extensive damage to flimsy houses and a storm surge could push seawater 25 kilometres inland, flooding cities including Kolkata.
The cyclone could have devastating consequences for India's fight against the coronavirus, possibly spreading the disease through evacuation centres to more remote communities, said T. Sundaramanan, a health systems consultant in Pondicherry in southeast India. The forests could act as a vital line of defence by dissipating some of the energy from the waves that would otherwise crash into the coastline, said K.J. Ramesh, the department's former chief.
In refugee camps in Cox's Bazar, where the first 10 coronavirus cases were confirmed last week, authorities and U.N. workers prepared 50 shelters and assigned 256 volunteer units. Masks and hand sanitizers were hastily added to emergency items in the shelters. Authorities in Bangladesh had assigned a medical team in each shelter, said Bangladesh's Junior Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Enamur Rahman.
Some cyclone shelters in West Bengal were being used to quarantine virus patients and migrant workers returning to their homes. The state government asked for trains transporting migrants to be suspended, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said. Some schools were turned into shelters, news reports said.In the seaside resort of Digha, many people feared going to the shelters, fisherman Debasis Shyamal said.
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