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With coronavirus spreading to smaller districts and rural areas, the UP government has extended the corona curfew till Monday (May 10) morning. The restrictions were set to be lifted on Thursday morning.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath. The meeting was attended by Health Minister Jai Pratap Singh and top government officials. It is the third extension of lockdown-like curfew in the country’s most populous state.
At first, the weekend curfew was extended for two days from Tuesday morning to Thursday morning and now it has been extended for another four days till 7 am on Monday (May 10), a government spokesman said.
During this period, all essential services will be allowed and vaccination drive will continue. Medical stores, vegetable shops and industrial units will continue to operate. It was also decided to intensify the sanitisation drive in all the 75 districts to break the transmission chain of coronavirus. UP is witnessing a spurt in coronavirus cases over the past few weeks.
The chief minister claimed that the current strain of Covid is constantly changing. “It is 30 to 50 times more infectious than the first wave,” he said.
Additional Chief Secretary, Information, Navneet Sehgal said that the government is constantly taking necessary steps to break the corona transition chain. Extending state-wide weekly bandh, now partial corona curfew is a step in that direction, he said.
He said that industrial units have not been kept closed during the weekly bandh in the state and the local administration has been told that the identity cards of the people working in the industrial units, workers of the essential services, employees of the health department and media personnel should be treated as an e-pass.