Cabinet Secretary reviews the situation in the 13 worst affected cities

NEW DELHI: As the country wide lockdown is coming to an end, Rajiv Gauba, Cabinet Secretary, called a meeting on May 28 with district magistrates and municipal commissioners of 13 cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Thane, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Indore, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur. These cities account for 70 per cent of the total COVID-19 cases in country.

The country registered 7,466 new cases and 175 reported deaths in last 24 hours. The total number of cases are 165,829 including 90,010 active cases, 71106 cured/discharged/migrated and 4713 deaths.

 “3,266 patients were found cured, in last 24 hours. This takes our total recovery rate to 42.75 per cent,’’ statement released by Health ministry said.

The meeting with Cabinet Secretary stressed that containment zones in these 13 cities should be geographically defined based on factors such as mapping of contacts, cases and their geographical dispersion and demarcate a well-defined perimeter to enforce strict lockdown protocols.

Till now there is no formal announcement on extending the lockdown beyond May 31, so far the lockdown is extended four times till it was imposed on March 24.

“In the meeting measures taken by the officials of corporations for managing the COVID-19 cases were reviewed. The central government has already issued guidelines on COVID-19 management in urban settlements. These strategic guidelines include work on high risk factors such as confirmed cases rate, death rate, doubling rate, test per million people etc,” the statement said.

The corporations can decide to designating areas such as residential colonies, municipal wards, police station areas, mohallas, municipal zones, towns as containment zones as per their requirement the statement added.

The Health Ministry also issued guidelines for reprocessing and reuse of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), on responding to quires raised by healthcare workers.

“Healthcare workers will be issued googles, which they need to decontaminate after every use. Goggles to be disinfected by users and reused at least five times each, whereby one pair of goggles will suffice for 6 days. The googles can be used by health workers till they get damaged or their transparency decreases. The ratio of issue of goggles to coverall is recommended at 1:6”, said the advisory.

The advisory also pointed out that reuse and reprocessing of goggles must be done only when it was dedicated to each individual (write name over the band).  “Store clean eyewear in a paper bag/in a clean area to avoid recontamination and the eye protection must be discarded if damaged/rendered optically non-clear on repeated usage,’’ it added.