The Bengal government on Monday announced that a total of 516 containment zones had been identified across the state and the relaxations given for other areas would not be applicable to those places.
“No activity is allowed in containment zones, except essential and emergency services. These areas are barricaded and all relaxations announced by the Centre as well as the state during the current phase of the lockdown would not be applicable to containment zones,” said state home secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay.
The state government has decided to make the list of containment zones, where the lockdown is strictly enforced with none allowed to enter or exit, available in the public domain so that people get to know whether they live in the containment zones.
“For the benefit of all and for the sake of transparency, the areas will be notified. In case of districts, the district magistrate and in case of Calcutta, the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, it (the list) would be brought out for the knowledge of the public,” said the home secretary.
According to the list prepared by the state, Calcutta has a maximum of 318 containment zones, while North 24-Parganas has 81, followed by Howrah with 74 and Hooghly with 18 such zones. Rest of the districts have either single digit containment zones or nil.
The home secretary has said the containment zones are dynamic and the number of zones will change with the passage of time.
Sources have explained that usually a new containment zone is created when a new Covid-19 positive case is found outside the existing containment zones.
“Each containment zone is created with about 200 to 500 households based on several factors like density of population and the nature of the area,” said an official.
If the containment zone is located in a city, the number of households would be much higher than that of semi urban or rural areas.
As restrictions on a containment zone are lifted only when no positive case is reported from the zone for a period of 21 days, the number of such zones is likely to increase in the next few days.
“For example, we did not find any positive case from a containment zone in Belgachia (in Calcutta) since April 27. But this cannot be dropped from the list of containment zones before May 17. But for that, no case should be reported till then,” said an official.
A CMC official said Belgachia could be a model for other containment zones.
“We had laid stress on implementing the lockdown strictly in the area soon after several cases were reported in the first week of April. The result is visible,” he said.
The mayor, Firhad Hakim, held a meeting at the CMC on Monday with councillors of all the wards that house containment zones and instructed them to ensure strict measures in the containment zones.
