Covid-19 update: New plan holds clues to unlocking country

AAJ KI DELHI/ INDIAN NEWS ONLINE

A Union health ministry plan has outlined how regions — cities, villages or neighbourhoods — with large outbreaks or multiple clusters of the coronavirus disease Covid-19 could be walled in, charting out what may be the first official road map to keep the disease in check by focussing curbs and surveillance on hot spots while other areas return to some degree of normalcy once the nationwide lockdown ends later this month.

The strategy is based on lessons from the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 influenza pandemic which, according to the report, had a bigger impact on “well-connected big cities with substantive population movement” while rural areas and smaller towns with low population and poor connectivity reported only few cases.

“The current geographic distribution of Covid-19 mimics the distribution of H1N1 pandemic influenza. This suggests that while the spread of Covid-19 in our population could be high, it’s unlikely that it will be uniformly affecting all parts of the country. This calls for differential approach to different regions of the country, while mounting a strong containment effort in hot spots,” said the health ministry’s containment plan for large outbreaks.