by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Rising number of Hot Spots worries Centre, states
1150 sealed off zones today
Harish Gupta
New Delhi, April 10
The Centre is extremely worried over the rising number of hot-spots or containment zones in states as total sealing and cordoning off large population is a new experience for state machinery. Even for the Centre it’s a new kind of challenge and strategy to deal with national-wide prolonged crisis is evolving by the day if not hour.
Sources in the Union Home Ministry say that there are as many as 1150 such hot-spots spread over 15 states and union territories. Earlier, the parameter for deciding the Hot-spots was 100 cases. But it has now been brought down to ten considering the fact that enough testing could not be done. The best way was to seal off these areas first, confine the large population inside and undertake intensive testing. The antibody testing is now being done on a large scale.
Some of these cluster containment zones are as small as two lanes in a locality in Delhi and as large as Bhilwara in Rajasthan where more than 20 lakh people were locked down from March 20 itself.
These sources say Maharashtra alone has more than 400 zones with Mumbai being the largest city in the country and Uttar Pradesh 105. Tamil Nadu is the second state where the number of containment zones is 222, 120 plus in Andhra Pradesh and 125 in Telangana.
It’s a matter of surprise that Covid-19 made serious inroads in Madhya Pradesh with 180 containment zones.
The Centre and state governments are working in complete tandem round the clock to monitor these hot-spots.
The Centre is working on various modules to handle these clusters comprising more than 1150 hot-spots to contain spread of virus and give all facilities to the residents. The areas under drones and CCTV watch 24x7.
Special team of sanitary workers and health care and local officials going door-to-door. Mumbai has seen double digit growth has during the past two days taking the number to 380 hot-spots has sent shock waves. It is these rising number of hot-spots that has forced the hands of the Centre and states to extend the lock-down.
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