Faced with a daily surge in Covid-19 cases, the Delhi government has imposed a curfew between 10 pm and 5 am till April 30. However, essential services and emergency movement of vehicles will be allowed.

The decision to impose night curfew comes at a time when Delhi reported over 3,500 new cases of infection daily over the last four days. On Monday, the positivity rate stood at 5.54 per cent, for the first time it crossing 5 per cent .

The proposal to impose night curfew was sent to the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s office on Monday, sources said.

Delhi government’s move a couple of days before the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to review the Covid-19 situation with chief ministers on Thursday. On Tuesday evening, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan will hold a review with representatives of 11 States where the infections are quite high.

Delhi has added 17,532 new cases in the last five days, according to official data. Since April 1, as many as 69 deaths have been reported. The national capital saw 117 deaths in March and 58 in February,

On Monday, Delhi reported 3,548 new cases taking the total to 6.79 lakhs. With 15 more fatalities, the overall death toll jumped to 11,096.

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Malls, theatres

Following the curfew, restaurants, malls and theatres will need to close by 10 pm. Industry players have raised concern about the impact on business due to restriction in timings.

Kabir Suri, Vice-President of National Restaurant Association of India said, “With the curfew, it is going to be a very difficult time for restaurants. We somehow survived so far, but with the new guidelines, it seems highly unlikely that we can sustain any longer. We were shut for most part of last year. We have been operating at 50 per cent and restricted hours since then. We had just about started seeing some respectable surge in consumption which prompted us to re-hire people and now we are left in the lurch.”

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“Curfew at 10 pm implies that we will have to shut our restaurants at 9 pm for people to reach their homes by 10 pm which prohibits dining completely post 9 pm and also affects the delivery business that contributes to the major proportion of revenue in our business,” he added stating the industry has urged authorities to provide some immediate relief. Kunal Sawhney, Senior V-P, Operations and F&B, Carnival Cinemas said, “There was a good hike in the admits in the past few weeks. Night curfew in Delhi will affect around 25-30 percent of our business as the last show will now be at 6 pm instead of 11pm or so. Mostly the family crowd comes in the night shows and ticket prices are different from the rest of the day and they spend a little more on F&B as well. Curfew also impacts the psyche of people in general. We wish that it will be over soon as the vaccination is taking place at better rate now and things will be back to normal soon.”

CAIT Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said, “The night curfew will directly affect the restaurants, hotels, banquets, and farmhouse businesses, which are already fighting for their survival due to the previous lockdown. In the last one year, all these sectors had to suffer a huge losses.”

 

 

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