New Delhi to screen 29m residents in home survey
India’s worst-hit city grapples with over 200 containment zones
India says it will carry out a massive survey for the coronavirus targeting the entire population in New Delhi of 29 million.
Officials will go each household to record each resident’s health details, and administer a test for the virus to those who show or report symptoms.
The survey will be completed by July 6, according to the government of New Delhi, the worst-hit city with over 70,000 confirmed cases. Police will be deployed to enforce physical distancing and prevent the mixing of the population inside more than 200 containment zones in the capital, where large clusters of cases have been confirmed.
CCTV or drone monitoring will also be used.
Police will have to ensure strict perimeter control and “absolute restriction of outward and inward movement of the population”, the city government said.
Highest rise
Meanwhile, India witnessed highest spike of over 18,000 fresh Covid-19 cases, with Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu contributing more than 62 per cent of it in the past 24 hours taking the total in the country to over 491,000, data from the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry revealed yesterday.
A total of 18,183 new cases egged the tally to 491,168 so far as India continued to be the fourth worst hit country by the pandemic. According to worldometers.info data, in the last 24 hours, 401 new deaths were reported taking the total fatalities to 15,308 in the country.
“Over 1,000 cases more were recorded in 24 hours than what we saw on Wednesday, when 15,968 new Covid-19 cases were reported,” the ministry said.
Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu continued at the top contributing almost 62 per cent of the total spike of the cases.
There are currently 190,196 active cases and 285,664 recoveries. The number of patients recovering from Covid-19 continues to rise. The recovery rate has further improved to almost 57.42 per cent.
Maharashtra remained the worst-hit state in the country with total cases at 142,900, including 6,739 deaths.