New Delhi: Metro cities Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, along with Ahmedabad, are still in the Red Zone and will remain under lockdown after 3 May, according to a list finalised by the Ministry of Health Affairs Friday.
In a letter to chief secretaries of all states and union territories, Health Secretary Preeti Sudan gave an updated list of districts falling in the red, orange and green zones.
“It is critical to ensure that necessary action for containment so as to break the chain of transmission of virus is initiated in both red and orange zone districts reporting confirmed cases,” Sudan said in the letter.
According to the new list, there are 130 districts in the Red Zone, 284 districts in the Orange Zone and 319 districts in the Green Zone. The earlier list released two weeks ago had 170 districts in red, 207 in orange and 353 in green zones.
List is ‘dynamic’, will be updated every week
The new districts have categorised based on factors like incidence of cases, doubling rate compared to past, with the addition of factors like extent of testing, surveillance and feedback from the state.
This list is “dynamic” and will be updated every week or earlier, said the letter.
Considering the increasing recovery rate, there has been a change in the categorisation of the districts. The districts that have not reported a new case in the last 21 days — down from 28 days — will now be called Green Zone.
The states can add additional red or orange zones based on field feedback and additional analysis but cannot relax the category of red or orange as designated by the ministry, the letter said.
UP, Maharashtra have highest red zones
Among the states, Uttar Pradesh with 19, Maharashtra with 14 and Tamil Nadu with 12 have the highest number of Red Zones.
Agra, Lucknow, Meerut, Varanas in Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nagpur in Maharashtra and Chennai, Madurai, Vellor in Tamil Nadu are among the cities included in the Red Zone.
Delhi’s suburbs of Faridabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida) are also in the Red Zone, while Gurgaon and Ghaziabad are in the Orange Zone.
In Gujarat, Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat are in the Red Zone while Karnataka has Bengaluru Urban, Bengaluru Rural and Mysuru in this zone.
Containment strategy
The districts have to delineate a containment zone that will be colonies, mohallas, municipal wards or police stations in urban areas and blocks, villages or clusters of villages in rural areas.
Areas around the containment zones would be marked as buffer zones.
The districts in containment zones will have to continue the containment strategy, including perimeter control, active surveillance of cases, testing of cases and contact tracing.
The ones in buffer zones will have to do monitoring of influenza like illnesses (ILI) and Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) cases in the health facilities.
See the complete list of districts here –
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