Haryana clamps night curfew as cases surge
THE CURFEW WILL REMAIN IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM TO 5 AM: OFFICIALS
CHANDIGARH: The Haryana government on Monday ordered imposition of night curfew across state from Monday night in view of the recent surge in Covid cases. The night curfew will remain in force from 9pm to 5am.
The state has recorded more than 21,000 active cases in the last nine weeks. The curfew order will come into force with effect from 9pm on April 12 and remain in force until further orders. Additional chief secretary (revenue and disaster management) Sanjeev Kaushal, in an order, said that since there has been a surge in number of Covid cases, it is imperative to put in place strict measure of isolation and social distancing to contain spread of the virus.
“A lot of non-essential movement of people and vehicles has been reported during night hours,” said the order.
Thus, the state government has decided to prohibit movement of individuals for all nonessential activities between 9pm to 5am across state. “No person will leave their homes, move on foot or by vehicles or travel or stand or roam around on any road or public places during the said hours,” the order said.
However, movement of officials entrusted with the task of maintaining law and order, emergencies, municipal services including executive magistrates, cops, health, electricity, fire, media persons with accreditation and government machinery tasked with Covidrelated duties will be exempted on production of identity card.
Those with specially issued restricted movement curfew passes will also be exempted. However, there will be no curbs on inter-state and intrastate movement of essential and non-essential goods.
CHANDIGARH: The coronavirus trajectory in Haryana climbed to an apex level last week (April 5-11) with the state registering 18,748 fresh cases. This is the highest number of infections reported in state since March 2020 when the first case was reported.
Before this, 17,426 cases reported between November 16 and 22 last year was the highest tally. The state had registered 10,414 cases between March 29 and April 4 and 7,891 cases between March 22 and 28.
Additional chief secretary (ACS), health, Rajeev Arora said the rising number of cases is a cause of concern but the state has ramped up preventive measures.
“We sampled 2.46 lakh individuals last week. This is the highest number of tests we have done so far.On vaccination, the health department has inoculated 1.79 lakh persons on Monday taking vaccination tally to 26.48 lakh,” the ACS said.
The number of active cases crossed the 20,000 mark last week and the sample positivity rate climbed to 4
POSITIVITY RATE HEADS NORTH
Four districts - Faridabad (8.45%), Gurugram (6.86%),
Rewari (6.42%) and Panchkula (6.33%) have a critical positivity rate of more than 6%.
Fifteen districts still have a positivity rate in the range of 2.64% to 5.58%.
This means it is lower than the critical positivity rate of more than 6% but higher than desirable positivity rate.
Officials said that the way the infection is spreading again, the positivity rate in Panipat, Ambala and Karnal will soon cross the 6% mark.
Three districts - Nuh (0.8%), Charkhi Dadri (1.11%) and Jhajjar (1.8%) continue to have a desirable positivity rate of less than 2% for the past several weeks.