The Delhi government on Monday issued an order which directed the district administration to come up with a revised plan for containment zones in the city by June 26 – an exercise for which the government has sought help of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
The order, issued by Dr Nutan Mundeja, the director general of health services in Delhi, on Monday asked the district administration to implement a “revised covid response plan”, which brings into effect a list of recommendations by Union home minister Amit Shah, who chaired a meeting on Covid-19 strategy on Sunday with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lieutenant Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal.
In the meeting, Shah had recommended the Delhi government to come up with a fresh strategy for the containment zones by Monday – a date that was later modified in the order to June 26 – in light of the fact that over Friday and Saturday, Delhi accounted for around 24% of the total number of fresh cases and 25% of deaths in the country, senior government officials said.
It was observed in the meeting that a fresh plan for containment zones was required since the city was reporting such a high number of cases. The home minister had also asked the Delhi government to set up district-level teams by Tuesday, to implement the fresh delineation exercise by Friday (June 26) and complete health survey of all individuals residing in containment zones by June 30. These dates find mention in Monday’s order without any change.
“The divisional commissioner will prepare the plan in consultation with NCDC,” said a senior government official who did not want to be identified.NCDC is an institute for research on epidemiology and control of communicable diseases.
The official further said, “District teams are ready for implementation of the new guidelines. The final plan will be ready by June 26 (Friday) and it will be implemented on the same day if needed. That way, we will not miss the deadline in terms of implementation. The deadline for the survey also remains unaffected. The order was drafted after consultation with members of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA).”
The DDMA is chaired by Baijal and the chief minister is the vice-chairman.
As on Monday, Delhi had 261 containment zones – with the highest number of them in southwest Delhi (39) and the lowest in northeast Delhi (3).
Earlier on Monday, suggestions were sought from the district magistrates in all 11 revenue districts of the Capital, and several of them have recommended that the strategy of fresh delineation should apply to the new containment zones and the existing ones should be left untouched for effective monitoring, said a second senior official who is privy to the details of a government meeting held on Monday.
Jugal Kishore, head of community medicine department in Safdarjung Hospital, said: “It is good that the government will consult the NCDC. The institute is better equipped with the knowledge of managing Covid cases. Containment zone demarcation strategy is a dynamic process and the requirements keep changing from time to time. The aim is to maintain an equilibrium between containing the disease by causing minimum inconvenience to people. This demands a scientific approach.”
The director general of health services has also directed the Delhi government to strengthen district level surveillance teams and oversight system by roping in district commissioners of police, the commissioner of the concerned municipal body and epidemiologists registered with the government; to strengthen the surveillance and contact tracing activities; to use input of Aarogya Setu app and the Itihaas app, which was developed by the Union ministry of electronics and information technology.
The government has been asked to conduct sero-survey of 20,000 individuals between June 27 and July 10 to gauge the burden of the disease; to engage civil society groups in the process and take adequate measures to protect transmission of Covid among healthcare workers. The district administration has been told to prepare a plan for house-to-house screening exercise to be conducted in the entire city (outside containment zones) by July 7. It also stated that cluster cases in highly dense areas will be sent to covid care centres.
