Lockdown 5.0 in 13 cities?: Not in Bengaluru, Surat

NEW DELHI, May 28: Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday drew up a list of 13 cities as having the worst COVID-19 that do not include Bengaluru and Surat figuring among 11 that were on Wednesday reported as possible places to face Lockdown 5.0 from June 1.
He did not indicate if the Lokdown is to be extended in these cities, but lengthy discussions on review of the situation with the municipal commissioners, district magistrates and the chief secretaries on how to contain spread of the dreaded disease but an official press release dropped hints of enforcing the strict protocol of lockdown there.
These are the 3 cities that constitute about 70% of the confirmed positive cases in the country.
The 13 focus cities are Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi / New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Thane, Pune, Kolkata / Howrah, Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Jaipur, Jodhpur, Hyderabadm Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur (Tamil Nadu). The last four did not figure in the list released by the indiatoday.in news website on Wednesday.
Measures taken by the officials and the staff of the municipal corporations for the management of COVID-19 cases were reviewed in the video-conference meeting. The central government has already issued guidelines on management of COVID-19 in the urban settlements.
Highlights of this strategy include work on high risk factors, indices such as confirmation rate, fatality rate, doubling rate, tests per million people etc, officials said.
They said the Centre has stressed that containment zones are to be geographically defined based on factors like mapping of cases and contacts and their geographical dispersion. This would enable in demarcating a well defined perimeter and enforcing the strict protocol of lockdown.
Municipal corporations can decide if residential colonies, mohallas, municipal wards or police-station areas, municipal zones, towns can be designated as containment zones, as required.
The cities were advised that the area should be appropriately defined by the district administration and local urban body with technical inputs from local level.