COVID-19: Disinfection of public spaces in Smart Cities

INN / New Delhi, @Infodeaofficial 

Public spaces (including streets, markets, shopping precincts, community centres, parks, playgrounds, and neighborhood spaces in residential areas) play a vital role in the social life of communities.

Corona virus Disease 2019 (COVID -19) is an acute respiratory disease caused by a novel Corona virus (SARS-CoV-2), transmitted in most instances through respiratory droplets, direct contact with cases and also through contaminated surfaces/objects. Though the virus survives on environmental surfaces for varied period of time, it gets easily inactivated by chemical disinfectants.

Ever since COVID-19 outbreak was declared as global pandemic, Indian Cities have been making significant efforts in sanitizing the cities, especially the public spaces which are considered risk prone areas for local spread of virus. Since the nation-wide lockdown was announced on 25 March 2020, Cities have been adopting numerous approaches to disinfect the public spaces including the bus/railway stations, streets, markets, hospital premises, banks, etc.

City Governments have collaborated with Fire Departments and used fire-tenders, water wash pumps, etc., to sanitize all the streets in the city by spraying disinfectants.

To facilitate availability of essential supplies such as fresh vegetables the agricultural markets were made operational in cities and measures have been taken by City Governments to keep these places safe. Hand-washing facilities are being provided at vegetable markets and other public places.

Cities are taking up innovative approaches for disinfection of public places using sodium hypochlorite, for example Tiruppur has recently implemented a disinfection tunnel, which is now replicated in numerous cities at their agricultural/ vegetable markets. Modeled on this, various establishments entrusted with provision of essential services are deploying the disinfection chambers.

Smart Cities such as Chennai, Bengaluru, Raipur and Guwahati have prepared themselves to use technology solutions such as Drones to disinfect the public spaces in the situation where human access gets difficult.