The State government has taken a progressive decision to revise the existing protocol for handling the bodies of those who die of COVID-19 and to allow families to take the mortal remains of their dear ones home for close relatives to pay last respects.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told media persons here on Tuesday that the government had decided to bring in a change in the funeral protocol as the distress and mental strain that the families who lose their loved ones to COVID underwent was considerable.
Henceforth, families would be allowed to take the body home for a short duration of less than an hour and to conduct religious rites too in a limited manner.
No other curbs
Mr. Vijayan said that while disease transmission had reduced and the test positivity rate brought down to 10%, further reduction in TPR had not been possible. Hence, the State was in no position to allow any further relaxations in lockdown than had already been allowed.
The fact that the State still had a huge population susceptible to COVID and that the delta virus currently in circulation was highly transmissible and capable of creating huge surge in cases if the vigil was lowered were also to be reckoned.
Following a review meeting on Tuesday, a few changes were being brought in the TPR-based classification of geographic areas and the relaxations allowed therein.
Accordingly, there are 165 local bodies in the A category (TPR less than 6%), 473 in the B category (6-12% TPR), 316 in the C category (12-18% TPR) and 80 in the D category (TPR more than 18%). Restrictions in civil life will continue on the basis of this categorisation for the next one week from Thursday.
In category B local bodies, autorickshaws will be allowed to ply. While buses will have to maintain limits while allowing passengers in, the District Collectors have been asked to make arrangements to have more buses ply in routes as per the requirement.
Checking will be intensified in railway stations and border checkposts to ensure that only those with COVID negative certificates can make inter-State travel.
He pointed out that as long as the virus was in circulation, no geographic locality, whether it comes under category A or B can be considered as safe and COVID-free. Hence restrictions and vigil will have to continue
Mr. Vijayan said that while people were maintaining COVID protocols in public places, disease transmission seemed to be going up within families and in closed spaces such as workplaces, where people were relaxing on safety precautions. Masking regulations would have to be strictly maintained in all offices.
Violation of norms
He said that violation of quarantine norms that necessarily need to be followed by a family when one person in the family gets infected seemed to be rampant now and that this cannot be allowed. If the infected person was being maintained in home care, the entire family would have to be on quarantine or else the infected person had to be moved to a COVID first line treatment centre.
He said that though earlier, quarantine violations were closely monitored by ward-level committees, after one-and-a half years of COVID, such activities had gone lax. He asked local bodies to tighten up on ward-level containment and surveillance measures.
