NEW DELHI: India now has 12 districts with over 50 cases of COVID-19 each and South Delhi in the national capital tops the chart with a whopping 320 confirmed cases, government data reveals.
The analysis of district wise cases maintained by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare shows that 12 districts—spread across 9 states-- account for over one third or 1,386 of the total 4,067 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country.
Mumbai with 298 cases is close behind South Delhi and other districts which have reported more than 100 cases include Kasaragode in Kerala, Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad in Telangana.
Other districts that have more than 50 patients of the disease include Ahmedabad, Kannur, Pune, Jaipur, Chennai, Yadari and Gautam Budh Nagar.
At state level, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Delhi have over confirmed 500 cases each of the infection and nationally 284 districts are now affected by the outbreak directly.
“We have a high number of affected districts now so we are categorising districts with over 10, over 20, over 30 and over 50 cases and monitoring the cluster containment efforts closely,” an official in the ministry told this newspaper.
Another official in the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme under the National Communicable Disease Centre said that a separate category of districts has been prepared based on the pattern of cases.
“Districts with small clusters have been seprated from districts where cases have been reported from several localities, which makes containment efforts more cumbersome,” the official said. “The situation is also dynamic and changing rapidly.”
Several other districts with cases slightly less than 50 but with a sizeable number of patients are also being closely evaluated, the official added.
Authorities also said that even though the national level lockdown is set to come to an end after April 14, an assessment is being carried out to see which districts and areas will need extended periods of lockdown.
“We have to understand that we are grappling with a health crisis with extremely high infectivity and it's going to be a long haul. Very meticulously planned containment efforts will need to be implemented in areas that have considerable number of COVID-19 cases,” said a scientist with the National Institute of Epidemiology under the Indian Council of Medical Research.
12 districts with the highest number of cases