Alarmed by the huge spike in coronavirus cases, the Pune administration has announced stringent measures, including 6 p.m. - 6 a.m. curfew starting Friday night for a week, top officials said here on Friday. All hotels, restaurants and malls will remain shut for the next seven days, though home delivery of household stuff shall be permitted. Religious places will be completely closed for the next 7 days.
The development came after a review meeting chaired by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Friday morning with top officials of the administration, police, health and other departments.
As per the order, no public function, except funerals and weddings, will be allowed. A maximum of 20 people at funerals and 50 at weddings will be permitted to attend. A 12-hour night curfew from 6 pm to 6 am will be imposed in Pune from tomorrow, 3rd April. "The situation will be reviewed next Friday," said Pune Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao.
"Malls, cinema halls will remain shut for seven days from Saturday. All religious places will also be closed for a week," he added.
Availability of essential services has been exempted from the 12 hours curfew, while the buses of the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML), the city's public transport system, will remain off roads for the next seven days, Rao said, adding that schools and colleges to remain shut till April 30.
Rao said, "All these decisions were taken in the given COVID-19 cases in the last few days. The situation is becoming critical. In the last one week, the positivity rate of the district has crossed 32 per cent”, stating that factories will be permitted to operate normally.
He said that the situation will be reviewed after 7 days. He also added that efforts were underway to increase the number of beds in hospitals in the district.
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"Since vaccination is the key to bring down the impact of infection, the speed of giving vaccines will be increased in the coming days," he said.
Pune district in Maharashtra on Thursday recorded 8,011 new Covid-19 cases, pushing its total count to 5,42,422, a health official said. This is for the second consecutive day the district has recorded more than 8,000 cases. While on Wednesday, 8,605 fresh corona infection cases were reported in Pune, it's biggest single-day spike ever since the pandemic began last year. Its fatality count reached 10,039 as 65 patients succumbed to the infection during the day.