West Bengal government on Friday announced a serious of restrictions in the wake of worsening COVID situation in the State which includes closure of all shopping complexes, malls, beauty parlours, cinema halls, restaurants, bars sport complexes, gyms, spas and swimming polls with immediate effect.
The decision comes at a time when the State registered a record infections and deaths on Friday. West Bengal on Friday registered 96 deaths in the past 24 hours and 17,411 new cases of new infections in the same time period. On Thursday the State had registered 89 deaths and 17,403 cases of infections.
“ All social/cultural/academic entertainment related gathering and congregation shall remain prohibited,” the notification issued by the State’s Chief Secretary said. The notification also imposed embargo on the opening of markets and have fixed a timing on when the markets will remain open during the day.
“Bazars/ hats will remain open only during 7 -10 am in the morning and 3- 5 pm in the afternoon (even while essential services like medical shops, medical equipment shops, grocery, etc. will remain outside the confines of the embargo),” the notification said.
The State government has also added that any violation of these orders will be liable to be proceeded against as per provisions of the DM Act, 2005 and besides legal action under IPC and other laws of the land will be applicable.
The order comes two days before counting of votes for West Bengal Assembly Elections 2021 are scheduled on May 2. The State government’s notification added that “all activities related to counting processes and victory rallies/procession will be guided by the guidelines already issued by the ECI”. The ECI has imposed a ban on victory processions and had made it mandatory for all counting agents to have to produce COVID negative certificates.
Earlier in the day in certain places like Howrah violence broke out when there were not proper arrangements for COVID-19 tests for counting agents. Despite a spike in the number of infections and deaths the number of samples tested for COVID-19 has remained the same. Patients with symptoms of the viral infections have to wait for days to get samples tested. Meanwhile, the State Health Department has empowered the principal of medical colleges and Chief Medical Officer of Health in district for increasing the number of COVID beds. About 200 new beds were added with the help of a private company at a sports stadium in the city.
In another important development the State government has decided to cancel all examinations of Class XI and for Class XII the students can write their examination in their own schools.
