170 hotspot districts, 29 in region

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 15

More than half of India’s 712 districts have reported Covid-19 cases with 170 designated in the red zone as disease hotspots and 207 in the orange zone as non-hotspot districts reporting infections.

The Centre today divided all districts into three zones as the national lockdown protocols until May 3 were shared with states.

In a letter to chief secretaries, the Health Ministry asked all states to roll out strict lockdown and containment measures in the red zone districts to enable these to turn orange and finally green. Likewise, the Centre has asked states to ramp up testing and contact tracing in orange zone. The idea is to prevent these districts from turning red.

The classification of districts is based on the scale of current disease burden in a given district and the rate at which the cases are doubling.

The classification came on a day India’s cumulative burden rose to 11,933 cases with 392 deaths and 1,343 recoveries. The Centre said while cases were rising, the rate of recovery and discharge were improving with each passing day, with 270 people being cured yesterday. As of Wednesday, the rate of cure was 11.41 per cent.

The 170 hotspot districts have further been divided into two sub-sets — 123 districts with large outbreaks and 47 districts with clusters. The second category is non-hotspot areas that are reporting cases.

Of the 170 hotspot districts, 29 are in the region. Punjab currently has eight red and nine orange zone districts, while Haryana has six red and 12 orange zone districts. Chandigarh has been designated in the red zone.

Himachal has five hotspot districts and JK eight. Five of J&K districts fall in orange zone. Ladakh has one hotspot district, Kargil.

A major containment plan for red zone districts will involve complete closure of all educational, recreational and other activities. Each of these districts will have to have an entry and exit point with record of visitors being maintained and movement will only be allowed for essential services based on government passes.

“In hotspots, districts will need the implementation of outbreak containment plan with entry and exit points. Districts where clusters of cases are noted will also have to follow containment measures. States also need to identify hotspots based on doubling the rate of confirmed cases. “This exercise of identification of hotspots has to be done every Monday.

Red Zone Districts in Region

Punjab: SAS Nagar, SBS Nagar, Jalandhar, Pathankot; Mansa, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Moga

Haryana: Nuh, Gurugram, Palwal, Faridabad, Ambala, Karnal

Chandigarh

J&K: Srinagar, Bandipora, Baramulla, Jammu, Udhampur, Kupwara, Shopian, Rajouri

Ladakh: Kargil

Himachal: Solan, Una, Sirmaur, Chamba, Kangra

2 MN cases globally

The number of Covid-19 cases worldwide passed the two-million mark on Wednesday. It took 83 days to reach the first million cases worldwide and just 14 days for the second million. Reuters