“All yoga institutes and gymnasiums in containment zones shall remain closed for the public. Only those outside containment zones will be allowed to open up,” is part of the guidelines for reopening of more sectors of economy.
Hyderabad has 95 COVID-19 containment zones according to the August 3 bulletin released on August 4. As gyms and yoga institutes are allowed to function only outside the containment zones from August 5, we tried to check out the limits of such zones in the city. But there aren’t any.
The medical bulletin lists 95 places up from 92 places three days ago. But the 95 places are area names except for a few exceptions where residential complexes like Ambiance Fort, Attapur, or Surabhi Apartments, Barkatpura, are identified. The list includes vast swathes of the city where Doodh Bowli, Asif Nagar, Bibi ka Chasma, Bazaar Ghat, Ghansi Bazaar and other areas are termed containment zones. In the absence of marked and cordoned off containment zones, the inclusion of these areas is of little use to citizens.
“One of the containment zones is near our house. The notice is mounted on the gate and once the gate is opened, it is like any other area. People continue to come in and go out of the apartment complex throughout the day,” says a resident near Janapriya Utopia in Attapur area. The area has other containment zones, including one where the door number is used to identify the spot.
In the initial days of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had outlined a plan for creating containment zones called ‘Micro Plan for Containing Local Transmission of Coronavirus Disease’. The plan called for a containment zone to be decided by a rapid response team which will take into consideration the extent of cases/contacts and map them.
“However, if contact listing/ mapping is taking time (>12-24 hours), then on an arbitrary basis demarcate an area of 3 km radius around the epicentre (the residence of the positive case). This area of 3-km radius will be the containment zone. If required, based on the mapping of contacts and cases, the containment zone will be refined,” says the document.
However, no such marking is taking place, leading to an information vacuum. In contrast, in Delhi, the containment zones list is updated by the Revenue department and marks out the house where individuals are infected and the perimeter of the containment zone.