Bengaluru, Apr 20 (IANS): City civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has declared 19 wards as Covid containment zones, setting off a range of restrictions and activities aimed at preventing the community spread of the pandemic, an official said on Monday.

"In exercise of powers conferred under Section 24 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, containment zones are to be identified in view of Covid positive case and aggregation of epidemiologically linked Covid cases in a limited area to prevent the further spread," said BBMP Commissioner B. H. Anil Kumar in an order.

The civic body has identified the residences of Covid positive cases ward-wise through a house to house survey for crisis management, special health needs, perimeter control, surveillance and preventive measures, solid waste management, providing essentials and others.

As part of identifying positive cases, places containing infected people from independent houses have been identified as A, apartments, AP and multiple cases have been identified as clusters.

Several upscale apartments featured in the containment zones.

Aimed at containing the virus from spreading, 100 metres radius around a positive case premise for independent houses has been declared as containment zone limits.

In case of apartments, the whole apartment block has been earmarked so and similarly, BBMP gave maps for clusters.

BBMP is also sanitizing, spraying and fogging and executing contact tracing for each and every positive case in the containment zones.

For each ward in the containment zones, the civic body has published a list of date of return to normalcy.

"Substantial interventions and limitations in the aforementioned containment zones have already been put in place from the date of detection of Covid positive cases in the area," said the commissioner.

All restrictions in the containment zones will come into effect from Monday midnight.