Kolkata, Jul 20 (IANS): In a latest development, the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government on Monday announced total lockdown across the state for two days every week.

In the wake of the recent spike in the number of Covid-19 cases, state Home Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay said that complete lockdown will be enforced across West Bengal on Thursday and Saturday this week.

"We have decided that from now onwards, there will be a two-day complete lockdown every week across the state, apart from running a broad-based containment zone approach. In the current week, it will be on Thursday and Saturday," Bandopadhyay told a press conference at the state secretariat Nabanna.

The Home Secretary also admitted that community transmission of Covid-19 has been recorded in a few pockets of the state. Bandopadhyay said that the containment zone-based Covid-19 lockdown strategy would continue across the state till July 31.

"An advisory has already been issued in that particular direction, alerting all district magistrates, police superintendents and other top brass of the state administration. They may take a view on continuing the lockdown depending on the local situation in their respective areas. They can do it for five to seven days," he said, adding that a total state-wide lockdown would be observed on Wednesday next week.

Bandopadhyay said that the next plan of action with regard to the weekly lockdown would be taken after a meeting on next Monday.

The state government had also added 63 new areas to the list of ‘broad-based' containment zones on Sunday, taking the total number of containment zones in the state to 739. The number of broad-based containment zones in Kolkata climbed to 32 from 24, state health department officials said.