Coronavirus: 80% of new cases in the first 12 days of May from 114 districts of the Red Zone

A medical officer stamps the hand of a man who returned to Agartala on a special train from Bangalore. Express Photo Abhishek Saha

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the country nearly doubled in the first 12 days of this month, and the scrutiny of case data from 644 districts, for which the district case load is available in state bulletins, shows that eight out of 10 patients who tested positive for Covid-19 in this period are from Red Zone districts.

Analysis of the data also shows that the number of cases has not increased in one in three of these 644 districts.

The analysis of state data shows that almost 81 percent of this jump in confirmed cases between May 1 and 12 came from the Red Zone, 15 percent from the districts of the Orange Zone and the rest of the Green Zone . The Center has divided the 733 districts of the country into three zones based on factors such as the total accumulated cases, the duplication rate, the incidence, the level of evidence, etc.: 130 in the Red Zone, 284 in the Orange Zone and 319 districts in the Green Zone.

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According to state bulletins, the number of cases increased from 34,905 on April 30 to 71,155 on May 12 (an increase of 36,250) in these 644 districts. Of these, although cases nearly doubled from 30,479 to 60,020 cases in 114 Red Zone districts, it increased from 4,627 to 9,866 in 258 Orange Zone districts (growth of 113 percent).

During the same period, 272 districts of the Green Zone reported 1,110 new cases, from 159 on April 30 to 1,269 on May 12. From the jump point in case load in these 644 districts, almost 81.5 percent (29,541 cases) of this peak came from 114 Red Zone districts, and just over 15 percent (5,599 cases) from 258 districts from the Orange Zone. The fact that 46 districts within the Red Zones had fewer than 100 new cases as of May 12 underscores the snowballing of cases at nearly five dozen other hot spots in the country.

The Indian Express analyzed cases in all states except Assam, Telangana, and West Bengal. Data at the district level for Assam and Telangana are not publicly available, and data for the Bengal districts was released as of May 4. Delhi does not provide district cases. As the 11 districts of Delhi are under the Red Zone, the figures are taken as a whole.

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