GHMC to stop managing COVID-19 containment clusters in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is all set to stop managing COVID-19 containment clusters in Hyderabad.

Reportedly GHMC is frustrated as the state health department is not providing updated information on newly COVID-19 patients or their whereabouts in the city.

Deccan Chronicle has quoted a senior GHMC official as saying “At first, data sharing was delayed by two days. This has now grown to a week. We are still operating containment areas based on data shared by the health department last week.”

Peeved with the Telangana health department, the GHMC is in no mood to take up fresh containment activities. In the last two days, it has reduced the house clusters by 50 per cent, cutting down the number from 1100 to 626.

According to the GHMC officials, the corporation is poised to dismantle all containment clusters. That effectively means that all primary and secondary contacts of a Covid-19 patient “should take care of themselves.”

All containment clusters in the Serilingampally zone have already been removed despite it having 35 active cases. GHMC maintained 79 house clusters in the LB Nagar zone which has 80 active cases, 345 house clusters in the Charminar zone which has 692 active cases, 31 house clusters in the Khairiatabad zone which has 39 active cases, 120 house clusters in Secunderabad zone which has 194 active cases and 51 house clusters in Kukatpally zone which has 131 actives cases.

According to sources, as the management of containment zones was increasingly becoming difficult, workers deployed on COVID-19 duties have been asked to revert to their normal duties, such as tax collection, tree plantation, demolition of dilapidated buildings, etc. Similarly all engineering officials have been asked to focus on roads and other infrastructure projects and expedite them.