54 districts in India without new COVID-19 cases in last 2 weeks: Centre

Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the ministry said that a high-level task force has been formed to work on the drug testing and vaccines for COVID-19.
A street vendor sprinkles water on spinach in locked down Thiruvananthapuram on a hot Sunday afternoon. (Photo | BP Deepu, EPS)
A street vendor sprinkles water on spinach in locked down Thiruvananthapuram on a hot Sunday afternoon. (Photo | BP Deepu, EPS)

NEW DELHI: There are now 54 districts across 23 states and union territories that have not reported fresh coronavirus cases during the last two weeks, the Centre said on Sunday.

The 10 new districts that have now got added in the list of districts that didn’t report cases in last 14 days include Gaya and Saran in Bihar, Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, Fatehgarh Sahib and Rupnagar in Punjab, Bhiwani, Hisar and Fatehabad in Haryana and Cachar and Lakhimpur in Assam.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare confirmed a total of 16,116 coronavirus cases in India in the daily briefing on COVID 19 on Sunday adding that as many as 2302 or 14 per cent of total cases have now recovered.

Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the ministry said that a high-level task force has been formed to work on the drug testing and vaccines for COVID-19.

This task force is co-chaired by Dr V K Paul, member (health), NITI Aayog and K VijayRaghvan, principal scientific advisor to the Prime Minister and will have representatives from AYUSH ministry, Indian Council of Medical Research, department of science and technology, CSIR, drug controller general of India and DRDO among others.

The group has been tasked to co-ordinate between ministries on vaccine development and speed up the research work carried out through international efforts by academicians and research institutions.

The government also said that starting Monday, restrictions will be eased in non-containment areas, but containment areas in hotspot districts will not be given any relaxation. States may impose further additional measures as per the local requirements.

According to central guidelines, hotspots have been defined as areas with large COVID-19 outbreaks or clusters with a significant spread or districts where the doubling rate of cases is less than 4 days.

Within hotspots, local administration is further expected to demarcate containment zones and buffer zones to control disease spread.

“Within containment zones, activities shall not be permitted within a strict perimeter control except for essential services. For places where selective relaxations are granted, States / UTs / District administrators must ensure that strict compliance of existing lockdown measures is done and preparatory actions as per SOPs related to social distancing are being followed in offices, workplaces, factories and establishments,” the central guideline said.

The Union government also clarified that as these are rolling criteria, new cases are reported from non-containment zones—they too can be earmarked as red zone or containment zone.

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