RWAs say Delhi’s containment policy pointless, demand rethink

In a letter to LG Anil Baijal and CM Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday, the RWAs said that by the time barricades and civil defence volunteers are deployed at a containment site, 3-5 days of the mandatory week-long quarantine period has already passed.

A group of 61 residents welfare associations in South Delhi have demanded that with the Omicron fuelled third wave of Covid cases ebbing down in the city, restrictions regarding micro containment zones should be curtailed as they are causing unnecessary inconvenience to a large number of households.

Barricades outside a containment zone at Green Park Extension in New Delhi, on Thursday. (Amal KS/HT PHOTO)

In a letter to lieutenant governor Anil Baijal and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday, the RWAs argued that by the time barricades and civil defence volunteers are deployed at a containment site, 3-5 days of the mandatory week-long quarantine period has already passed. They added that the fact that containment period was longer than quarantine time seems “illogical”.

Ruby Makhija, secretary of Navjiwan Vihar RWA said from symptoms appearing to testing being carried out and deployment of civil defence volunteers, five days are usually over.

“Micro containment zones are enforced where even a couple of cases are reported. We received a large number of complaints in which people have cleared the 7-day quarantine period but they are restricted to houses for 14-days due to containment zone regulations. This is illogical and wastage of resources. The civil defence staff can be better utilized in crowded areas and markets,” she added.

Several RWA representatives have argued that with home testing kits being freely available, the 14-day containment period only discourages people getting RT-PCR test done.

“As we all are aware that it is a community spread now and we are almost at the end of the wave. The positivity rate is less than 1.5%. Home testing kits are freely available and the persons who test positive using these kits do not necessarily report. Under such circumstances, creating containment zones when two or more individuals tests positive seems illogical. Some of the buildings that are contained have multiple households staying on separate floors causing major inconvenience to the non-positive households,” the letter said.

According to the Delhi government’s daily health bulletin on Wednesdsay, the city had 13,183 containment zones and a positivity rate of 1.37%. The daily Covid case count has remained below 1,000 for the last five days. As of Wednesday, Delhi had 3,197 active Covid cases, of which 2,041 patients were in home isolation. HT has reported that several health experts are of the opinion that when a wave reaches the stage of community spread, containment strategies are pointless.

As per the central government’s guideline, the containment zone area is sealed and movement is restricted for 14 days. If no new infection is identified during the period, the scaling down process can begin, and only 28 days after the first Covid case is reported from the area, it can be de-notified.

On the ground, however, this is leading to strange issues. Shafali Mittal, general secretary of Sarvodaya Enclave RWA, said in many buildings, which were sealed for containment, the movement of people in flats with no-covid cases was also restricted. “Who will walk the dogs? who will do the daily chores in these houses with no cases? There is no application of mind behind this policy. What is the point of wasting so much government money and this is inhuman on two civil defence volunteers too who have to stand there all day long,” she added.

Mittal said that the RWAs have never been informed about these containment zones. “We even had a case in which the patient was transferred to private hospital but the personnel kept guarding the site,” she added.

The 61 signatory RWAs includes associations from neighbourhoods like Greater Kailash, Vasant Vihar, Sainik Farms, Geetanjali Enclave, Mayfair Gardens, Sunder Nagar,Hauz Khas, Niti Bagh, Nizamuddin East, Green Park, Saket, Sarita Vihar among other places.

Lalit Kumar, secretary of Green Park RWA stated that the policy is impractical especially for places where multiple affected flats are located in one building. “There are four or eight flats in one building in our area and if Covid positive cases are detected in one house, the other seven households face restrictions even after the affected family has cleared the quarantine period. They have to justify the reasons about going out every single time they try to step out. this makes no sense,” he added.

A Delhi government spokesperson did not respond to the queries regarding the letter. However, a senior health department official said the central government guidelines mandate that an area would continue to be a notified containment zone for 14 days. “This is so even though the government has revised its home isolation guidelines reducing number of days from 10 to seven,” he said.

Dr Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at Safdarjung Hospital, said during the current Omicron wave, the actual infections were much higher than what was reported and because of the mild symptoms, majority people recovered at home. “In a scenario where so many people in the city were infected with Covid, what is the point of creating containment zones. The whole point of containment zones is to isolate an area where higher cases are being reported, but when the entire city is facing the same infection rate, these strategies do not work,” he said.