All 6 metros, other major cities including Delhi’s 9 districts under COVID-19 ‘red zone’

India on Thursday crossed the 12,000-mark with the total number of COVID-19 cases mounting to 12,380 and the death toll rising to 414, according to the latest Health Ministry data.

There are 10,477 active cases in the country while 1,488 people have been cured or discharged after treatment.

941 new COVID-19 cases and 37 fatalities have been reported in the last 24 hours.

Maharashtra remains the worst hit state with the total number of positive cases rising to 2,916, followed by New Delhi with 1,578 cases and Tamil Nadu, which has reported 1,242 cases and Rajasthan with 1,023 cases.

The novel Coronavirus has infected over two million people worldwide and led to more than 1,36,000 deaths globally.

A list of 170 hotspot districts have been identified by the Centre, which includes all six metros and most large cities.

The list has marked 123 districts as “large outbreaks” which includes all nine districts of the national capital – South, South West, Shahdara, South East, West, North, Central, East and New Delhi.

Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru Urban, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Agra were among the areas marked hotspots on the list.

Tamil Nadu tops the list with 22 districts in the hot spots while Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh (including Vishakhapatnam) are second on the list with 11 each.

Bihar has one hot spot in Siwan; entire Chandigarh is included; Chhatisgarh has Korba; Gujarat has five including Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, and Rajkot; Haryana has four including Gurugram; Jammu and Kashmir has five including Srinagar, Jammu, and Baramulla; Karnataka has three including Bengaluru urban, Mysore, Belagavi; Kerala has six including Kasaragod and Kannur; Madhya Pradesh has five including Bhopal, Indore, and Ujjain; Maharashtra has 11 including Mumbai, Pune, Sangli, Nashik, Thane, Nagpur, Aurangabad; Odisha has only Khordha; Punjab has four including SAS Nagar, Jalandhar, and Pathankot; Rajasthan has 11 including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Tonk, Jaisalmer, Bhilwara, Bikaner, Bharatpur, and Kota; Tamil Nadu has 22 including Madurai, Tuticorin, Chennai, Salem, Cuddalore, Coimbatore, Erode, and Vellore; Telangana has eight including Hyderabad, Nizamabad, and Warangal; Uttar Pradesh has nine in Noida, Lucknow, Shamli, Firozabad, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Ghaziabad, Meerut, and Agra; Uttarakhand has Dehradun; and West Bengal has four including Kolkata and Howrah.

According to the government a hotspot which will be called a red zone would be a district or city that contributes to more than 80 per cent 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.

The Centre has also identified 207 districts as potential hotspots and 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 green zone, that is COVID-19 free area.

Earlier on Wednesday, Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan said that the Government has been successful in pin-pointing where the virus is, while adding that there are around 400 districts in India where Coronavirus has not entered.

Speaking on state-wise performance, Harsh Vardhan said Bihar isn’t as badly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic as Maharashtra and Karnataka.

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 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.

Segregating areas into three zones, she said: “Containment operation would be deemed over when there is no case reported in 28 days from an area after the last case tests negative. Hotspots (designated red zones) will be assumed to be undertaking effective containment activities, if no case is reported in the next 14 days (designated orange zones) and will be deemed successful in containment, if no case is reported for 28 days (designated green zones).

Earlier on Sunday, it was reported that the Government has come up with with green, orange and red colour codes to map the coronavirus affected zones.

According to the reports, the idea of colour codes was discussed in Saturday’s four-hour-long meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers of all states.