In tests at Delhi’s biggest containment zones, a 6/11 score raises hope

Covid-19: The national capital has a total of 92 containment zones across its 11 districts. The spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in the remaining containment zones is well under control, the official said.

Updated on: Apr 24, 2020, 22:58:32 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Six out of the 11 biggest containment zones in national capital Delhi have reported an increase in cases during tests conducted over a five-day period, a top Delhi government official told Hindustan Times.

Clouds over the India gate which was closed for tourist during the nationwide lockdown to limit the coronavirus, in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, April 23, 2020. (Biplov Bhuyan/HT PHOTO)

The national capital has a total of 92 containment zones across its 11 districts. The spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in the remaining containment zones is well under control, the official said.

The health department had carried out tests between April 19 and 23 to get a sense of the spread of infection in these Covid-19 hotspots.

The positive cases shot up from 2 to 51 in Sadar Bazar, rose from 20 to 32 in Nabi Karim, from 3 to 20 in Chandni Mahal zone and from 8 to 13 in Nawabganj.

Also read: In key video conference with PM Modi, what could be on states’ wish list

In north Delhi’s Jahangirpuri’s C block that covers people living in 10 lanes, the cases went up from 20 to 32 while in Budh Nagar, Inderpuri containment zone, one additional case was reported taking the total to 3.

There was no increase reported from Nizamuddin Markaz and basti (it has 12 cases), Bara Hindu Rao (10), EA block of Inderpuri (2), Jahangirpuri’s B block (8) and Dilshad Garden (6).

The test results have prompted Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal to order officials to further demarcate the big containment zones into sectors. Or as one official described them, “safe zones”.

For instance, four sectors - C-1, C-2, C-3 and C-4 - have been carved out of Chandni Mahal containment zone, home to 5.5 lakh people. And another three - S-1, S-2 and S-3 - in Sadar Bazar.

A senior health department official said the government was keen that safe zones within large containment zones be carved out to keep them insulated from the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen. So Chandni Mahal may still be one containment zone but it is divided into four sectors.

Also read: In Centre’s Covid-19 lockdown exit plan, 1 principle and 2 crucial worries

The size of a containment zone is directly proportional to the population density of the cluster in question and the scale of the outbreak.

Many of these are small, in some cases as small as a single lane in a residential colony.

But there are other areas where the administration had notified an entire locality - home to lakhs of people - as a containment zone.

In all, there are 11 containment zones in the city that have a population of more than 10,000.

Of these, there are 8 where the population is between 10,000 and 40,000 people.

The three mega containment zones are in central Delhi: Sadar Bazar where 3.5 lakh people are under a hard lockdown, Chandni Mahal with a population of 5.5 lakh and Nabi Karim, which has a population of 1.5 lakh.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.