Coronavirus pandemic | Is your city a COVID-19 hotspot? Find out here

Some districts have been classified as Hotspot or Red Zone as they are reporting a large number of COVID-19 cases and/or high growth rate of such cases.

Moneycontrol News

May 19, 2020 / 19:53 IST

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Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has infected 1,01,139 people across India and killed 3,163 people, the districts have been divided into two parts: Hotspot and Non-Hotspot districts by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Some districts have been classified as Hotspot or Red Zone as they are reporting a large number of COVID-19 cases and/or high growth rate of such cases.

Inclusion criteria
The new guidelines on inclusion of an area in red, orange or green zones state as follows:

The containment zones in these districts have to be delineated based on mapping of cases & contacts, Geographical dispersion of cases and contacts, area with well demarcated perimeter, enforceability.

Depending on above factors, for urban areas residential colony/mohallas/municipal wards or police-station area/municipal zones/towns etc. as appropriate can be designated as containment zones.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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