Soon after the Telangana High Court questioned the state government’s handling of the spread of the coronavirus, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has announced details of 63 containment zones in the city. The containment zones are spread across LB Nagar, Charminar, Khairatabad, Serilingampally, Kukatpally and Secunderabad areas in Hyderabad. As of last week, GHMC officials had said that there were no containment zones in the city.
On Monday, the Telangana High Court had given the state government an ultimatum of 48 hours to decide on concrete steps to intensify restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Among other measures, the court asked the state government to make public the information on micro-containment zones, which are to be declared in the media bulletins.
According to the state government’s COVID-19 bulletin for Thursday, Hyderabad district has 52 active micro-containment zones. The GHMC’s list, uploaded on its website, mentions 63 containment zones under its limits. The containment zone strategy to curb the spread of the coronavirus was first adopted in the city in April last year, by cordoning off the entire areas that fall under the containment zone, and restricting movement in and out of the zone with barricades. Essentials required by households were also arranged by the GHMC. Amid resurging COVID-19 infections, the containment zones have been declared again.
Until last week, health officials of the GHMC had said that the city only had hotspots instead of containment zones, where authorities were requesting local residents to voluntarily restrict movement in and out of the hotspot areas.
Telangana recorded 6,206 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, according to the state government’s bulletin, of which 1,005 cases were reported from GHMC limits. With this, the total number of active cases in the state has gone up to 52,726. Twenty-nine deaths from COVID-19 were registered on Friday, taking the total official death toll in the state up to 1,928.
See the full list of containment zones in Hyderabad here.