From 58,000 to under 500: Major fall in COVID containment zones in Delhi in 2 months

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New Delhi: With the second wave of COVID-19 subsiding, the number of containment zones in Delhi has gone down from over 58,000 to less than 500 in the last two months, according to official data.

Containment zones are residential areas with three or more active COVID-19 cases, entailing complete restrictions on entry and exit from such places and special measures such as mass testing, tracing and tracking.

According to latest figures of the revenue department, the total number of containment zones across the 11 districts of Delhi is 472.

The districts with lower numbers of such zones are South East Delhi (zero), East Delhi (six), Central Delhi (eight) and North East Delhi (10).

New Delhi district has the highest number of 176 containment zones. Other districts with higher number of such areas are North Delhi (86), South Delhi (64), West Delhi (35), Shahdara (34), North West (30) and South West (23).

With the number of Covid cases rising exponentially during the second wave of the pandemic in the third week of March, the number of containment zones in the city went up rapidly with over 1,500 added every day by the second half of April, the figures show.

By mid-May, the number of containment zones in the national capital was over 58,000.

With the number of fresh Covid cases running into thousands in April and May, many districts resorted to containment of individual buildings, where even one person was found positive for the infection, under a micro-containment strategy, officials said.

The process for opening the containment zones starts 14 days after the recovery of the last known positive case there.