NEW DELHI: Keeping in mind possible threat of COVID-19 further spreading from hotspots, Union Health Ministry on Saturday devised a containment plan that outlines geographical quarantine with perimeter control to break the transmission chain.
“The current geographic distribution of COVID-19 mimics the distribution of H1N1 Pandemic Influenza. This suggests that while the spread of COVID- 19 in our population could be high, it’s unlikely that it will be uniformly affecting all parts of the country. This calls for a differential approach to different regions of the country while mounting a strong containment effort in hot spots,” it added.
According to the document, in India also, clusters have appeared in multiple states, particularly Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Punjab, Karnataka, Telangana and UT of Ladakh. 211 districts are now reporting COVID-19 cases and the risk of further spread remains very high.
India would be following a scenario-based approach for the five possible scenarios — travel-related case reported in India, local transmission of COVID-19, large outbreaks amenable to containment, wide-spread community transmission of COVID-19 disease and India becomes endemic for COVID-19. The document says that geographic quarantine strategy calls for near-absolute interruption of movement of people to and from a relatively large defined geographic area where there is single large outbreak or multiple foci of local transmission of COVID-19.