Covid-19: Center lists red green zone districts for week after May 3 | India News

NEW DELHI: Before the end of the prolonged blockade, the Union Ministry of Health has listed 130 districts of the country in the red zone, 284 in the orange zone and 319 in the green zone based on the incidence of Covid cases. 19, duplication rate, extent of evidence, and surveillance comments.
This classification of districts must be followed by the states and the UTs until one week after May 3, when the second phase of closure will end, for containment operations.
The list will be reviewed weekly or sooner and will be communicated to states for additional follow-up action.
Metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru, and Ahmedabad have been designated as red zones in the new classification.

The new district ranking was announced after a video conference chaired by the Cabinet Secretary on April 30 with the state’s top secretaries and health secretaries.
In a letter to the top secretaries of all states and UT, the Union Ministry of Health secretary, Preeti Sudan, said: “It is important to ensure that we identify pockets of critical interventions for a focused management of Covid-19 at the level field “.
She said the districts were previously designated as critical zones / red zones, orange zones, and green zones primarily based on reported cumulative cases and the doubling rate.
“As recovery rates have increased, districts are now being designated in various areas by appropriately expanding the criteria. This classification is multi-factorial and takes into account case incidence, duplication rate, scope of evidence and feedback surveillance to classify the districts, “Sudan said in its letter.
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It will be considered a district under the green zone if no Covid-19 cases have been confirmed so far or if no cases have been reported since the last 21 days in the district, according to the letter.
Until now, any district in the red or orange zone could become a green zone if no new coronavirus cases were reported for 28 and 14 consecutive days, respectively.
In the list, all the 11 districts of Delhi have been classified in the red zone (critical points).
Maharashtra has 14 districts in the red zone, 16 in orange and six in the green zone, while Gujarat has nine districts in the red zone, 19 in orange and five in the green zone.
In Madhya Pradesh, there are nine districts in the red zone, 19 in orange and 24 in the green zone, while Rajasthan has eight, 19, and six districts in the red, orange, and green zones, respectively.
Uttar Pradesh has 19 districts in the red zone, 36 in orange and 20 in green, while Tamil Nadu has 12 districts in the red zone, 24 in orange and one district in the green zone.
Goa, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur, Nagaland and Mizoram fall under the green zone.
Telengana has six districts in the red zone, 18 in the orange and nine in the green zone. Andhra Pradesh has five districts in the red zone, seven in orange and one in the green zone, while West Bengal has 10, 5 and 8 districts in the red, orange and green zones, respectively.
Some states like Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Meghalaya, Puducherry and Tripura do not have red zone districts.
Noting that some states “have raised problems about including certain districts in the red zone,” the secretary noted that this is a dynamic list.
The secretary said that based on field comments and additional analysis at the state level, states may designate additional red or orange zones as appropriate.
“However, states may not relax the zonal classification of districts classified as red / orange as reported by the ministry,” Sudan said.
For districts that have one or more municipal corporations, corporations and other district areas may be treated as separate units.
If one or more of these units have not reported cases in the last 21 days, they can be considered a lower level in the zonal classification, in case the district is in the red / orange zone.
However, district authorities must be cautious in those areas so that they remain free of Covid-19 cases, he said.
“It is essential to ensure that the necessary actions for containment are initiated to break the chain of transmission of the virus in the districts of the red and orange zones that report confirmed cases,” he said.
The containment zones in these districts have to be delineated based on the mapping of cases and contacts, the geographical dispersion of cases and contacts.
A buffer zone must be demarcated around the containment zone.
The necessary actions must be initiated in these areas as part of the Containment Action Plans that include strict perimeter control, establishing clear entry and exit points, without movement, except for medical emergencies and essential goods and services, without an uncontrolled influx of population, active search of cases through house-to-house surveillance by special teams, testing of all cases according to sampling guidelines and follow-up of contacts.
Similarly, in buffer zones, exhaustive case surveillance should be performed through ILI / SARI case monitoring in health facilities.
“Accordingly, all states are asked to delineate containment zones and buffer zones in the identified districts of the red and orange zones and report the same,” he said.
The death toll from Covid-19 rose to 1,147 and the number of cases rose to 35,043 in the country on Friday, according to the Union Ministry of Health.