Lockdown 5.0: 13 Cities, Including Delhi, Mumbai, Indore, Under Watch; Break The Chain, Cente Asks Municipal Commissioners | Check List

Lockdown 5.0 Guideline: Centre asks 13 cities to start door-to-door surveillance to trace active cases, instead of only depending on contact tracing.

New Delhi: Ahead of the completion of nationwide lockdown 4.0, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday held a meeting with municipal commissioners and district magistrates of 13 COVID-19 hit cities in the country including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai, officials said. Thirteen cities have been identified as the most affected by the COVID-19 as they are contributing to the 70 per cent of the positive cases in the country.

Here is a list of those 13 cities:

1. Mumbai
2. Chennai
3. New Delhi
4. Ahmedabad
5. Thane
6. Pune
7. Hyderabad
8. Kolkata/Howrah
9. Indore
10. Jaipur
11. Jodhpur
12. Chengalpattu
13. Thiruvallur

Chief secretaries and principal secretaries (health) of all states and Union Territories have attended the meeting through video conference with the agenda of ‘Public Health Response to COVID-19’. District magistrates or collectors of the 13 cities also joined the meeting, the official said.

The measures taken by the officials and the staff of the municipal corporations for the management of COVID-19 cases were reviewed in the meeting. Highlights of this strategy include work on high-risk factors, indices such as confirmation rate, fatality rate, doubling rate, tests per million people etc, another official said.

Here is What the Centre is suggesting

1. Proper mapping of the containment and buffer zones
2. Active search for cases through house-to-house surveillance
3. Proper laying out of the activities allowed
4. Emphasis on contact tracing
5. Strengthening the testing protocol
6. Focus on the clinical management of active cases.

It also dealt with the surveillance activities in the buffer zones like monitoring of Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) or Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) cases, ensuring social distancing, promoting hand hygiene etc.

The Centre has been pushing for the geographic area of containment zones to be defined based on factors like mapping of cases and contacts, geographical dispersion of cases and contacts. It said the area with well-demarcated perimeter and enforceability should be enforced.

For municipal corporations, residential colony, mohallas, municipal wards or police-station area, municipal zones, towns can be designated as containment zones, as appropriate.

The cities were advised that the area should be appropriately defined by the district administration and local urban body with technical inputs from the local level.

Along with the containment zones, buffer zones around containment zones also must be demarcated to break the chain of transmission. Maintaining high vigilance and monitoring in areas of old cities, urban slums and other high-density pockets along with the camps for migrant workers are other key factors for the COVID-19 strategy for the high-risk areas.

The nationwide lockdown was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 for 21 days in a bid to combat the coronavirus pandemic. It was first extended till May 3 and again till May 17. The lockdown has now been extended till May 31.

(With PTI Inputs)