Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday held a meeting with Municipal Commissioners, District Magistrates of 13 COVID-19 hit cities to review the situation.
The 13 focused cities are Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi/New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Thane, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata/Howrah, Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Jaipur, Jodhpur, Chengalpattu and Thiruvallur (Tamil Nadu).
These 13 cities are considered to be the worst coronavirus affected locations and constitute about 70 per cent of the positive cases in the country.
In the meeting chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, measures taken by municipal corporations for the management of COVID-19 cases were reviewed, a press release said.
The Central government has already issued guidelines on the management of COVID-19 in urban settlements.
Highlights of this strategy include work on high-risk factors, indices such as confirmation rate, fatality rate, doubling rate, tests per million people, etc.
The Centre has stressed that containment zones are to be geographically defined based on factors like mapping of cases and contacts and their geographical dispersion. This would enable in demarcating a well-defined perimeter and enforcing the strict protocol of lockdown, it read.
"Municipal corporations can decide if residential colonies, mohallas, municipal wards or police-station areas, municipal zones, towns can be designated as containment zones, as required," the release said.
The cities were advised that the area should be appropriately defined by the district administration and local urban body with technical inputs from the local level.
( With inputs from ANI )