Coronavirus Update- 21 Out Of 37 Districts, Including Chennai, Fall In The Red Zone

Tamil Nadu has recorded for the most number of red zones with 21 of 37 districts in the South Indian south Indian state marked as hotspots, Hindustan Times reported Friday.

These are the districts: Chennai, Tiruchirappali, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, Erode, Vellore, Dindigul, Villupuram, Tirupur, Theni, Namakkal, Chengalpattu, Madurai, Tuticorin, Karur, Viruhnagar, Kanniyakumari, Cuddalore, Thiruvarur, Salem, Nagapattinam

A hotspot that will be called a red zone would be a district or city that contributes to more than 80 percent 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.

Currently, 33% of India falls under the hotspot category, the report added.

According to the centre, there are 207 other districts marked as potential hotspots and the government has now 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 a green zone, that is COVID-19 free area.

In order to strengthen government's efforts to contain the novel coronavirus, country's districts will now be classified into three categories—hotspot districts which report a large number of positive cases, non-hotspot districts which record a few coronavirus cases and green zones which have not reported fresh cases for some time. A buffer zone of an additional 5-kilometre radius (7 Kms in rural areas)/administrative boundary of including neighbouring districts/per-urban zone shall also be identified.

Union Health Secretary Preeti Sudan also wrote to Chief Secretaries of states and Union Territories, asking them to divide their states and UTs into two sections -- hotspot and non-hotspot areas. States also need to identify hotspots based on the doubling rate of confirmed cases. The exercise of identification of hotspots, she says, has to be done on a weekly basis, every Monday. She has advised strict containment plans for such clusters.