Lockdown Extended, India Split into Safety Zones

Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India (GoI) issued an Order under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, to further extend the lockdown for a further period of two weeks beyond May 4, 2020. It is set to end on May 17. The extension will however see some relaxations which will be regulated based on the spread of the virus in the districts, identified as red (hotspot), green and orange zones. The green zones are districts with either zero confirmed cases till date; or, no confirmed case in the last 21 days. The classification of districts as red zones will take into account the total number of active cases, doubling rate of confirmed cases, extent of testing and surveillance feedback from the districts. Those districts, which are neither defined as Red nor Green, shall be classified as Orange zones. Dr. Niranjan Hiranandani, President, NAREDCO stated, “The lockdown extension comes along expected lines, the classification into red, orange and green zones, given the number of infected patients had largely crated the expectation of red zones. The aspect of saving lives cannot be emphasized more, having said that, the move of allowing some economic activities to restart in green and orange zones is much needed. Ideally, we also need some economic activity restarted in red zones too, obviously with due protection and following norms as laid down by the authorities.”