The Centre on Wednesday identified 170 districts as coronavirus hotspots or “red zone” areas, including all six metros and most large cities, NDTV reported. These places account for more than 80% of the cases in the country or witnessed an exponential rise in infections.

Earlier in the day, the health ministry classified districts across the country into three categories – hotspots, non-hotpots, and green zones.

A list released by the government marked 123 districts as “large outbreaks” – which includes all nine districts of Delhi. Mumbai, Kolkata, nine districts of Bengaluru Urban, Hyderabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Agra were among the areas marked as hotspots. All the six metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – have a high number of cases.

Tamil Nadu with 22 districts has the highest number of designated hotspots in the list. This is followed by Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh with 11 districts each.

Of the 170 hotspots, 47 of them have cluster outbreaks but do not have community transmission, the government said.

Besides this, 207 districts where the rate of doubling of cases is currently low but they can be potential hotspots have been classified as “non-hotspots” or “white zones”.

States have been asked to ensure that the outbreak is contained in all the hotspots. If no new outbreaks are reported within 28 days and all the existing patients recover, the area can be declared a green zone, the government added.

It also said that testing would be ramped up to include checking even those who displayed “influenza-like illnesses” and breathlessness.

India has reported 12,380 coronavirus cases with 414 deaths as of Thursday morning.

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