Union Home Minister Amit Shah has chaired a high-level meeting where the report of Dr. VK Paul Committee on containment strategy of COVID-19 in Delhi was presented. The Containment Strategy determined by Dr. Paul has asked to revise the demarcation of containment zones and strict monitoring and control of activities in such containment zones.

Delhi Government will finalize a plan by 22nd of this month and will issue revised demarcation of all containment zones by 26 June as well as hundred percent survey of containment zones by 30th June. A comprehensive survey of the rest of Delhi will also be done by 6th July. During the meeting, the Home Minister also directed the Delhi Government to conduct assessment in respect of every dead individual as regards how many days before death the person was brought to hospital and from where.

It has asked to do contact tracing and quarantining of contacts of all infected persons, with the help of Aarogya Setu and Itihas Aap. Listing and monitoring of each household even outside containment zones, which will help in getting comprehensive information about Delhi.

Meanwhile, the Union Minister of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Dr. Jitendra Singh has reviewed the COVID status and healthcare facility in Aspirational districts with special focus on North East. He also disclosed that in the wake of the COVID pandemic, the Ministry of DoNER has decided to sanction 190 crore rupees for augmentation of healthcare facilities in the eight North Eastern States, particularly for developing infrastructure for management of infectious diseases.

Addressing a Virtual meeting, attended by the Health Secretaries as well as Deputy Commissioners and Health officials of the 14 Aspirational districts of Northeast, Dr. Singh said, the concept of Aspirational District was based on 49 key indicators, of which the status of healthcare was an important component. Dr. Singh said that an important experience from the COVID pandemic is that in the future, pre-emptive preparedness for epidemic and infection was imperative for optimum healthcare. Considering this, he said, the Ministry of DoNER has given the North Eastern States the option to send proposals for health-related projects to be funded up to over 500 crore rupees from North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme.

He said, accordingly, proposals have been received from the States of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim, Mizoram and Nagaland, while the proposal from the eighth State of Tripura is awaited. Dr. Singh also complemented the Aspirational Districts of Goalpara and Dhubri in Assam for having achieved Ayushman Bharat coverage of nearly 100 and 85 percent.