Delhi imposed weekend curfew and the Centre reintroduced pandemic-induced attendance system for officers as daily Covid-19 infections surged to a staggering 37,379 on Tuesday, the highest since September with a national positivity rate of 3.24 per cent.

The Omicron tally in the country also expanded to 1,892 with Maharashtra at 568, followed by Delhi at 382 and Kerala at 382.

The vaccination count was 90.55 lakh doses on Tuesday till 7:00 pm with cumulative inoculations at 147.66 crore so far, as per the CoWIN Dashboard. Since the children vaccination drive began from January 3 for 15-18 set, more than 81.45 lakh children have got their first dose.

50% attendance for govt staff

The Centre said its pandemic-related attendance system will come into effect immediately and will be in place till January 31. “Physical attendance of government servants below the level of under secretary shall be restricted to 50 per cent of actual strength and remaining 50 per cent will work from home,” an office memorandum issued by Department of Personnel & Training said.

Weekend curfew returned in the national capital as the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Tuesday decided to reimpose more restrictions in the wake of a fresh surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The daily infections touched 5,481 in Delhi with a positivity rate of 8.3 per cent, up from the previous day’s 6.46 per cent. Besides the curfew on weekends, all State government employees except those engaged in essential services will work online. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has himself been diagnosed with Covid-19.

Significantly, States were circumspect about describing restrictions such as night and weekend curfew as “lockdown”. Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain underlined that it was only “restrictions” and not a lockdown while in Karnataka Health Minister K Sudhakar said,

 

“Do not use strong words like lockdown, livelihood is trying to get back to normal now, if this (lockdown) is imposed, livelihood will be disrupted.” Although it is a challenge to contain the virus without disrupting the livelihood of people through lockdown, the government has an experience of two years to face this and it will be faced, the Minister said.

Other States, including Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, are also contemplating restrictions. Though cases are soaring due to the high transmissiblity of the Omicron variant, most are mild or asymptomatic. In Gurugram, hospitalisation rate is only 1.25 per cent and there is no need of oxygen for those who are admitted. But if the hospitalisation numbers go up, more restrictions will have to be imposed. Recently, the State had enforced curbs in Gurugram, Faridabad, Ambala, Panchkula and Sonipat from January 2.

In Rajasthan, the State government is constantly monitoring the situation to assess the level of restrictions.

Stringent measures

“Currently, there are 700 cases in Jaipur, of which 23 have been admitted in the hospital. Only six patients have been put in the ICU ward. Recently, the State head took a meeting to decide on more stringent measures to curtail the spread,” said a State official. He added that if a lockdown has to be imposed, it would be done in Jaipur only as other districts have been reporting less daily cases of about 150. “We have formed a committee to assess the Covid situation in Uttarakhand. There has been a surge in infections. We are conducting RT-PCR tests of all the patients who are reporting to hospitals. Currently, there are no hospitalisation cases,” a source said.

“We will impose additional restrictions in the State based on the number of cases hospitalised. We are not planning any complete lockdown but will undertake micro containment measures,” the above source added.

Except Sikkim and Meghalaya, all the States saw a sharp jump in active cases on Tuesday with the active cases constituting 0.49 per cent of the total cases.

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