New Delhi: In the run-up to Lockdown 4.0, the Centre has decided to minutely monitor containment measures and contact tracing in red zone
districts while leaving the decision on economic activities and how to restart marketplaces to the state governments.
The Centre is likely to decide only on some broad issues post-May 17, like taking a call on rail and air transport, malls and cinemas, religious gatherings and the night curfew during Lockdown 4.0 and leave the rest of the issues to the states.
A senior government official said states will be “redrawing” the boundaries of red, orange and green zones in their jurisdictions, which may not be districts anymore, and submit their blueprints to the Centre specifying what relaxations they want in each area along with reasoning for the same.
“The broad understanding among CMs is that while the green zones should be completely opened up, only the containment areas in orange zones should see restrictions while the red zones should see restrictions in the containment areas and also a buffer zone around it. States can decide on which restrictions they want and work as per their own requirements,” a central official said.
The new guidelines would broadly lay down the prohibited activities while leaving the major decisions on how and where to start economic activities to the state governments. According to sources, movement of children and senior citizens would be restricted.
While the home ministry would lay down specifically not to allow schools, gymnasiums, malls, swimming pools, sports complexes, monuments and tourist places to open up, they would allow private dental clinics, general physicians, shops in market places to open up.
However, some sources in the ministry of health and family welfare said the definition of red, orange and green zones is unlikely to change. The government had tweaked the classification for Lockdown 3.0 when it classified a district which had not seen any case for 21 days as green. Earlier, a district had to go Covid-free for 28 days to be classified in
green zone. There would be a change in the number of districts classified in the three zones but this would be used largely for monitoring purposes rather than to decide on the allowed economic activities.