India has been battling the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic on war-footing with strict lockdown, social distancing, minimizing human contacts, locating the red, orange, and green zones, tracing the hotspots and sealing it.
Several states and UTs across the nation has witnessed a spike in hotspots. Hotspots have been identified on the basis of areas where large COVID-19 outbreaks have been reported or in clusters with a significant spread of the disease according to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
While red zones comprise all the hotspot districts with large outbreaks and clusters; orange zones comprise districts that have not seen any new cases in the last 14 days, and gree zones consist of all the non-infected districts.
A red zone district can be moved to the green zone if there is no new case seen in the last 28 days and an orange zone district can be moved to the green zone if there is no new case seen in the last 14 days.
As of Tuesday, the district, with the maximum number of red zones, is Tamil Nadu (22), followed by Maharashtra (14), Uttar Pradesh (13), Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh (12 districts each), Delhi (10), Telangana (9), Karnataka and Jammu and Kashmir (8 districts each), Gujarat,
Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab (6 districts each).
The maximum number of green zones have been identified in Uttar Pradesh (35), Madhya Pradesh (32), Bihar (27), Arunachal Pradesh (26), Chhattisgarh (24), Assam and Odisha (21 districts each), and Jharkhand (19).
In Tami Nadu, the districts in the red zones are-- Chengalpattu, Chennai, Coimbatore, Cuddalore, Dindigul, Erode, Kanniyakumari, Karur, Madurai, Nagapattinam, Namakkal, Salem South, Tirupur, Tiruchirappalli, Theni, Tirunelveli, Thoothukkudi, Tiruvallur, Tiruvarur, Vellore, Viluppuram, and Virudhunagar.
The red zones in Maharashtra are--Ahmednagar, Amravati, Aurangabad Central, Buldhana, Kolhapur North, Mumbai City, Mumbai suburban, Nagpur Central, Nashik, Palghar (ST), Pune Cantonment (SC), Sangli, Thane, and Yavatmal.
In Uttar Pradesh, the red zones are--Agra, Bagpat, Basti, Bulandshahr, Firozabad, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Meerut, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Shamli, and Sitapur.
The red zones in Rajasthan are--Bikaner, Banswara, Bharatpur, Bhilwara, Jhunjhunu, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Jhalawar, Kota, Tonk, Udaipur.
In Andhra Pradesh, the red zones are--Anantpur, Chittoor, East Godavari, Guntur East, Kadapa, Krishna, Nellore, Kurnool, Prakasam, Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore, Visakhapatnam North, and West Godavari.
The red zones in Delhi are--Central Delhi, East Delhi, New Delhi, North Delhi, North West Delhi, Shahdara, South Delhi, South East Delhi, South West Delhi, and West Delhi.
The Union Health Ministry on Tuesday said that plasma therapy is at an experimental stage only right now and has not been approved for the treatment of coronavirus COVID-19 s far. "ICMR would like to clarify unless and until there is any proper approval through clinical research and trials, it would be improper to make any claim related to plasma therapy," the health ministry said.
Addressing a routine daily briefing on coronavirus, the ministry said that India has reported 1,543 fresh cases in the last 24 hours. With this, the total count in the country now stands at 29,435. The health ministry also said that India has reported a total of 6,864 recoveries so far, including 684 in the last 24 hours.
