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Updated: Apr 24, 2020 22:58 IST

Six out of the 11 biggest containment zones in national capital Delhi have reported an increase in cases during tests conducted over a five-day period, a top Delhi government official told Hindustan Times.

The national capital has a total of 92 containment zones across its 11 districts. The spread of the Sars-CoV-2 virus in the remaining containment zones is well under control, the official said.

The health department had carried out tests between April 19 and 23 to get a sense of the spread of infection in these Covid-19 hotspots.

The positive cases shot up from 2 to 51 in Sadar Bazar, rose from 20 to 32 in Nabi Karim, from 3 to 20 in Chandni Mahal zone and from 8 to 13 in Nawabganj.

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In north Delhi’s Jahangirpuri’s C block that covers people living in 10 lanes, the cases went up from 20 to 32 while in Budh Nagar, Inderpuri containment zone, one additional case was reported taking the total to 3.

There was no increase reported from Nizamuddin Markaz and basti (it has 12 cases), Bara Hindu Rao (10), EA block of Inderpuri (2), Jahangirpuri’s B block (8) and Dilshad Garden (6).

The test results have prompted Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal to order officials to further demarcate the big containment zones into sectors. Or as one official described them, “safe zones”.

For instance, four sectors - C-1, C-2, C-3 and C-4 - have been carved out of Chandni Mahal containment zone, home to 5.5 lakh people. And another three - S-1, S-2 and S-3 - in Sadar Bazar.

A senior health department official said the government was keen that safe zones within large containment zones be carved out to keep them insulated from the Sars-CoV-2 pathogen. So Chandni Mahal may still be one containment zone but it is divided into four sectors.

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The size of a containment zone is directly proportional to the population density of the cluster in question and the scale of the outbreak.

Many of these are small, in some cases as small as a single lane in a residential colony.

But there are other areas where the administration had notified an entire locality - home to lakhs of people - as a containment zone.

In all, there are 11 containment zones in the city that have a population of more than 10,000.

Of these, there are 8 where the population is between 10,000 and 40,000 people.

The three mega containment zones are in central Delhi: Sadar Bazar where 3.5 lakh people are under a hard lockdown, Chandni Mahal with a population of 5.5 lakh and Nabi Karim, which has a population of 1.5 lakh.