The Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday detailed on how India will implement the containment strategy for COVID-19 outbreak.
Through graphic illustrations, the Centre detailed measures to be taken by states and district administrations for cluster containment in hotspots, wider testing and ensuring protective gear for health and security personnel.
The COVID-19 containment starts with the identification of hotspots and their categorization into Red, Orange and Green zones, said MHA spokesperson.
The strategic approach for COVID-19 containment broadly involves defining the area of operation, applying perimeter control, delineating containment and buffer zones, active search for cases, contact tracing, quarantine, clinical management and awareness generation among public.
Specific activities inside the COVID-19 containment and buffer zones include active surveillance by Anganwadi workers, ANMs, NSS, NYK etc through house-to-house visits; increased testing etc.
The government has also defined activities in non-hotspot/potential districts and non-infected districts.
https://x.com/PIBHomeAffairs/status/1250720979388489728
A list of 170 hotspot districts have been identified by the Centre, which includes all six metros and most large cities.
The list has marked 123 districts as “large outbreaks” which includes all nine districts of the national capital. Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru Urban, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Agra are also among the areas marked hotspots on the list.
According to the government a hotspot which will be called a red zone would be a district or city that contributes to more than 80 per cent of the cases in the country or the state. Apart from these places that show a high rate of infection, that is doubling rate less than 4 days – will also be in this category.
The Centre has also identified 207 districts as potential hotspots and tasked the states to ensure containment of outbreak in these regions. The only way that a district or region can be brought out of the red zone is when there is no new case of COVID-19 for at least 28 continuous days, once this is achieved the district would be called green zone, that is COVID-19 free area.
Earlier on Wednesday, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said that the Government has been successful in pin-pointing where the virus is, while adding that there are around 400 districts in India where Coronavirus has not entered.