Eight Telangana districts including Hyderabad have been categorised as hot spots with a large outbreak of Covid-19 cases while 11 districts from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh figure in the list.
The hotspot districts in Telangana are Hyderabad, Nizamabad, Warangal Urban, Ranga Reddy, Jogulamba Gadwal, Medchal Malkajgiri, Karimnagar and Nirmal.
In Andhra Pradesh, Kurnool, Guntur, SPSR Nellore, Prakasam, Krishna, YSR Kadapa, West Godavari, Chittoor, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari and Anantapur have been declared hotspots.
Nalgonda district of Telangana is a hotspot district with clusters while there is no district from Andhra Pradesh in this category.
As many as 19 districts from Telangana are non-hotspot districts reporting cases. They are Suryapet, Adilabad, Mahabubnagar, Kamareddy, Vikarabad, Sangareddy, Medak, Khammam, Bhadradri Kothagudem, Jagtial, Jangaon, Jayashankar Bhupalapally, Kumaram Bheem Asifabad, Mulugu, Peddapalli, Nagarkurnool, Mahabubabad, Rajanna Sircilla and Siddipet.
There is no district from Andhra in this category.
In a letter to Chief Secretaries of all states on Wednesday, Union Health and Family Welfare Secretary Preeti Sudan said that they should effectively use extended lockdown period till May 3 for implementing containment measures in a focused manner. She wrote that strict containment measures need to be implemented in the hotspots.
States also need to identify hotspots based on the doubling rate of confirmed cases. This exercise of identification of hotspots has to be done on a weekly basis (every Monday) or earlier.
States were also told to take containment measures in non-hotspots districts reporting cases.
Containment operation would be deemed over when there is no case reported in 28 days from an area after the last case tests negative. Hotspots (designated red zones) will be assumed to be undertaking effective containment activities, if no case is reported in the next 14 days (designated orange zones) and will be deemed successful in containment, if no case is reported for 28 days (designated green zones).