A high-level meeting of Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 was held on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Harsh Vardhan, the government said on Tuesday.

“This was the 14th GoM meeting in which a detailed presentation on the present status of COVID-19 cases globally and within the country was made. The Group of Ministers had in-depth deliberation on containment strategy and management aspects of COVID-19, as well as the measures being taken by the Centre and various States. GoM was informed that all districts in the country have been divided into three categories i.e. Red Zone (130 Districts), Orange Zone (284 Districts) and Green Zone (319) Districts,” government told.

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The green category represents the districts which have not reported any case for the last 21 days. States have been asked to follow and further strengthen their contingency plans to combat COVID-19 on the basis of classification of the districts. Several other measures about strengthening the capacity of states including devoting adequate resources for creating Dedicated COVID-19 Hospitals, equipping the medical institutions with an adequate number of PPEs, ventilators and other essential equipment etc., were also discussed in detail.

GoM was apprised that as of now the death rate is around 3.2% while recovery rate is more than25 per cent, which may be taken as a positive effect of the Lockdown in the country along with the cluster management and containment strategy. Various recommendations of Government of India for the containment zone management pertaining to indicators, root causes and action required are already shared with the States/UTs for better and effective management of COVID-19 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Chairman of Empowered Group -11 informed the GoM that they are monitoring and supervising the strategic issues arriving out of the measures taken so far in containing the pandemic.

He also apprised the GoM that at different stages during the lockdown, decisions on graded liberalisation were taken after consultations with stakeholders, cutting across various ministries and other Empowered Groups.