No red zone in Jharkhand, 21 districts in orange and 3 in green zones
Cases in Jharkhand have seen a rise since migrant workers started returning to the state.
Following the centre’s new guidelines allowing states to categorise areas in their territory into different zones, Jharkhand decided not to place any of its districts in the red zone and instead categorised all 21 affected districts as orange zones.
The state’s three Covid unaffected districts-- Khunti, Pakur and Sahebgunj—were put in the green zone.
Ranchi, Garhwa and Hazaribag, classified as red zone districts during the third phase of lockdown, have now been converted into orange zones.
“Presently the state has no red zone district as none of the 24 districts have reported more than 200 positive cases. Therefore, all 21 affected districts are placed in the orange zone and three other districts, which have not reported any positive case so far, are declared green zones,” said state health department’s principal secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni.
He added, “The state currently has 106 containment zones in which 1.09 lakh people reside. A total of 19,200 samples have been tested which shows that as many as 198 people from these containment zones were infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
As per the guidelines of ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW), the green zones will be districts with either zero confirmed cases till date; or with no confirmed case in the last 21 days. Whereas, districts will be marked as red zones or hotspots on the basis of six different parameters including more than 200 active cases, high doubling rate and sample positivity rate greater than 6%.
Feedback from the district officials will also be taken into consideration. Those districts, which are neither red nor green, are categorised as orange zones.
Jharkhand has so far reported 330 positive cases including 191 active ones, 136 cases have recovered and three people have died. The state has been witnessing a steep surge in Covid-19 cases after May 1 when stranded migrant workers started returning to the state.
According to the state disaster management department, about 1.38 lakh migrant workers have arrived so far with more to come. About 3 lakh workers have expressed interest in returning to Jharkhand from different states.
“As many as 19,686 migrant workers have so far been tested for Covid-19 and 147 of them were found infected with SARS-COV-2 virus. About 8% of these patients have returned from Mumbai, a Covid-19 hotspot,” health secretary Kulkarni said.
He added that the state government was putting all migrant workers in quarantine centres and tests are being conducted on those found symptomatic.
