In Kolkata, only house premises with COVID-19 cases to be notified as containment zones from now, not the entire area

Most of the wards in Kolkata Municipal Corporation – 113 out of 144 wards – have containment zones in the city. Some wards have several containment zones already, with 339 such zones identified in the latest list for Kolkata.

With more containment zones being notified thus, movement of people, vehicles, opening of shops and businesses too are getting affected, as these are being strictly monitored by the police. Movement into containment zones and moving out of these areas is strictly prohibited.

Under this backdrop, the KMC authorities at a meeting on Wednesday decided to make alterations in notifying the containment zones. From now, only the house where one or more persons have been detected with Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and the passage to and from the house will be notified as containment zone. A radius of approximately three kilometre from the detection of a positive case has so far been considered to be a containment zone.

The state and the city police are also working on dividing the red zones across the state into three zones depending on the degree of the infection and potential of its spread.

Municipal affairs minister and former Mayor Firhad Hakim of KMC – who is now holding the position of the administrator as municipal elections could not be held due to COVID-19 – will also meet chairpersons of all municipal bodies. The meeting has been planned to discuss how to go about handling the COVID-19 situation across the state. The lockdown and its impact has been affecting the services of the municipal bodies for the past month and a half.