Gurugram to add 37 sealed areas, but each one to be smaller

GURUGRAM: While the Haryana government works on guidelines for gradual unlocking, Gurugram is set to add 37 containment zones as cases keep rising. The containment zones, however, will be much smaller.
“In our new plan, areas within a radius of 1km from the place a case has been reported will be under containment. The patient’s house will be the epicentre and the containment area will be mapped with that as the reference,” a health official said.
So far, the city had been sealing off areas in a 3-km radius as the containment zone and an additional 7-km radius was marked as buffer zone. When the cases first started coming in, two highrises had reported Covid-19 cases — one of them, relatively smaller, was sealed off entirely and the other, much larger, society only had a few towers closed off. With the reduced containment plan, only a few towers in a society will be sealed.
But while each area under containment reduces, the number of containment zones is set to go up. Gurugram has 64 as of now. “We will soon have 101 containment zones,” the official said.
This comes as the number of cases continues to surge in leaps by the day — 97 more cases were reported on Sunday and the number of cases neared the 800-mark, at 774. Of these, 497 are active. The new cases — the city has added 437 cases in four days — have also been more spread out lately, which means the city has smaller clusters but more in number. The number of areas with just one case has also been significantly higher since the newer cases started being reported, which could be why the city is planning a larger number of containment zones with smaller areas each.
But while already reduced, the sealed area in each containment zone might go down further. “We are going with the 1-km radius for now. If required, we could scale it back even more,” the health official said. The sealing radius in other NCR cities like Noida and Ghaziabad, for instance, has been brought down to just the tower in which a case has been reported.
As of now, MCG is responsible for sanitisation of containment zones. Movement of people within containment zones remains restricted, with police deployed at all entry and exit points which are barricaded. But that could change should the Haryana government decide to ease lockdown rules in keeping with the central guidelines. It would also be in line with its efforts to kickstart the economy, which had been affected by the shutdown. While it tries to get people back in offices and industries, however, the relaxations, if they were to be ordered, would coincide exactly with the exponential surge of Covid cases in the city.