New Delhi : Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday held a meeting with Municipal Commissioners, District Magistrates of 13 COVID-19 hit cities to take a review of the situation.
The meeting bears significance as these 13 cities are considered to be the worst novel Coronavirus affected locations and constitute about 70 per cent of the positive cases in the country.
The cities are Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi , Ahmedabad, Thane, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Indore , Jaipur, Jodhpur, Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur. The Chief Secretaries of all States and Union Territories concerned attended the meeting.
The measures taken by the officials and the staff of the municipal corporations for the management of COVID-19 cases were reviewed during the meeting.
The central government has already issued guidelines on management of COVID-19 in urban settlements. Highlights of this strategy include work on high risk factors, indices such as confirmation rate, fatality rate, doubling rate and tests per million people.
Centre has stressed that containment zones are to be geographically defined based on factors like mapping of cases and contacts and their geographical dispersion.
This would enable in demarcating a well defined perimeter and enforcing the strict protocol of lockdown. The cities are advised that the area should be appropriately defined by the district administration and local urban body with technical inputs from local level.