CHENNAI: After the Central government tweaked the criteria for classifying the districts according to the severity of coronavirus infection, 14 districts in the State have been moved from red to orange zone.
This was reflected in the health bulletin issued on Friday.
What are the criteria for new classification?
Green zone includes districts with zero confirmed cases, or no confirmed cases in the last 21 days. Red zone districts will be defined taking into account total number of active cases, doubling rate of confirmed cases and extend of testing and surveillance feedback. Orange zone includes districts that neither fall in green or red.
The classification gives power to district administrations to separately assess the situation in areas coming under municipal corporations and outside, and distribute the cases accordingly. If a red zone district has no positive case for 21 days outside a municipal corporation limits, then the area outside may be classified as orange. Similarly, if an orange zone district does not have a positive case for 21 days outside its municipal corporation limits, the area outside may be termed green.
If the parts of red or orange zone districts have even one case in the 21-day period, the status of the districts will be retained. Previously, the State used to classify a district as red if it had more than 15 cases or the doubling time was less than four days. Similarly, a district was considered orange zone if it had less than 15 cases or had no new cases in the past 14 days.A green zone district meant no new cases in the past 28 days.