As the country entered into the second phase of the 21-day lockdown on Wednesday with around 12,000 positive Covid-19 cases and 392 deaths, the Government has identified around 377 districts where it plans to intensify its virus containment strategy even as around 400 districts across the States remained green zones where coronavirus has not stepped in so far.
The identification of zones based on Covid-19 footprint comes amid Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan’s observation that the “next 2-3 weeks are going to be the most crucial in handling the Covid-19 pandemic particularly in India.”
Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary Health Ministry, said at a Press briefing here that with a view to manage Covid-19, every district has been divided into “Hotspot”, “Non-Hotspot districts with reported cases”, and “Green zone districts”.
The criteria for segregation are based on reporting of more numbers of cases and speed of growth of cases.
There has been steadily increase in cases with 1,118 new cases reported in the last 24 hours, taking the coronavirus tally to 11,933. 1,343 people have recovered and 392 persons have succumbed to the dreaded virus. One person has migrated to another country.
The large outbreak containment strategies and cluster containment strategies have been planned in the designated hotspots and non hotspots. These containment strategies describe how to delineate the containment zone and buffer zone.
In these containment zones, except for essential services, the rest of the movement and activities will be restricted, said Agarwal.
Cases will be actively monitored and surveyed by special teams in the containment zone as per sampling criteria. In these zones, the samples will be collected and tested. In addition to this, testing for any cases of ILI (influenza like illness) and SARI (severe acute respiratory illness) with proper orientation of all health facilities will be undertaken for the buffer zones.
Special teams are to be set up to trace all contacts as well as conduct house to house surveys. These teams will include the health staff, local revenue staff, corporation staff, Red Cross, NSS, NYK and other volunteers.
Segregating areas into three zones, the Union Health Ministry said, “Containment operation would be deemed over when there is no case reported in 28 days from an area after the last case tests negative. Hotspots (designated red zones) will be assumed to be undertaking effective containment activities, if no case is reported in the next 14 days (designated orange zones) and will be deemed successful in containment, if no case is reported for 28 days (designated green zones).
Districts have also been told to classify hospitals as Covid Care Centres for mild cases or very mild cases, Covid Health Centres for clinical moderate cases requiring oxygen support, and Covid Dedicated Hospitals for severe and critical cases with ventilator support.
“The districts which have not reported any cases yet, have also been directed to work on cluster containment plans. In order to break the chain of transmission, focus needs to be on contact tracing, monitoring and clinical management. States have been asked to uniformly implement the containment plan in every district across the country,” said Agarwal.
Of the total cases, 2,687 have been reported from Maharashtra, followed by Delhi (1,561), Tamil Nadu (1,204), Rajasthan (1,005), Madhya Pradesh (987), Uttar Pradesh (735), Gujarat (695), Telangana (647), Andhra Pradesh (503) and Kerala (387).
The Union Territory of J&K has reported 278 cases, West Bengal (213), Karnataka (277), Haryana (199), Punjab (186), Bihar (70), Odisha (60), Uttarakhand (37), Chhattisgarh (33), Himachal Pradesh (33), Jharkhand (27), Chandigarh (21), Ladakh (17), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (11), Goa (7) and Puducherry (7).
In the northeast, Assam has reported the most number of cases at 33, while Meghalaya has reported 7 cases. There are two cases each in Manipur and Tripura, while Mizoram, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have one case each.