3 Punjab, 2 Haryana districts in red zone

New Delhi, May 1

As the country entered the third spell of national lockdown to counter Covid-19 today, the Centre divided country’s 733 districts into red, orange and green zones for the purposes of containment and disease surveillance.

Red zones in region

• Haryana: Sonepat, Faridabad
• Punjab: Patiala, Ludhiana, Jalandhar
• J&K: Bandipora, Shopian, Anantnag, Srinagar
• Himachal: None
• Chandigarh

Ministry of Health advocated a “ruthless manner of containment” through contact tracing, testing and house-to-house surveys in the newly designated 130 red zone districts. The ministry told states through a letter that while they could add red districts to the list, they could not take them off the centrally designated hotspot list which would be revised weekly and earlier, if possible.

As of today, there are 130 red, 284 orange and 319 green districts. The fresh segregation of districts came as India’s Covid count touched 35,365 with 9,064 persons cured and discharged and 1,152 deaths.

In the past 24 hours, the country saw 1,755 new Covid cases and 77 deaths, the highest so far. The cure rate in the country, as of Friday, was 25.6 per cent. This has been steadily improving. The northern region is home to 10 red districts, 53 orange and 16 green districts with Chandigarh retained in the red zone.

Punjab has three red districts Jalandhar, Patiala, Ludhiana; 15 orange (SAS Nagar, Pathankot, Mansa, Taran Taran, Amritsar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur, Faridkot, Sangrur, SBS Nagar, Ferozepur, Muktsar, Moga, Gurdaspur, Barnala).

In Haryana, the two red zone districts are Sonepat and Faridabad. Eighteen orange zone districts in the state are Gurugram, Nuh, Panipat, Panchkula, Palwal, Rohtak, Hisar, Ambala, Jhajjar, Bhiwani, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Karnal, Jind, Sirsa, Yamunagar, Fatehabad, Charkhi Dadri.

HP has no red zone district.

In J&K, the four red districts are Bandipora, Shopian, Anantnag and Srinagar— TNS