Most shops and commercial establishments, which fall under the non-essential category, remained closed in Mysuru on Sunday, the second-day of the weekend curfew.
Thin traffic plied on the roads in the CBD comprising Sayyaji Rao Road, D. Devaraj Urs Road, Ashok Road and Irwin Road as most shops and establishments remained closed. However, shops selling essential items like daily provisions, vegetables, fruits and milk, besides drug stores remained open.
The weekend curfew imposed in Mysuru along with seven other districts bordering Kerala and Maharashtra began at 9 p.m. on Friday and is scheduled to end at 5 a.m. on Monday. The decision to impose weekend curfew in Mysuru had evoked an angry response from various trade and business organisations, who claimed that the lockdown would seriously affect their and their employees sources of livelihood. The trade and business organisations, which had formed a federation, to oppose the lockdown, had earlier decided to violate the curfew on Sunday, but with withdrew their threat and kept their shops closed.
The decision to withdraw their threat to violate the lockdown came after Minister for Co-Operation promised to appeal to Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to relax the restrictions in Mysuru as the COVID-19 situation was under control in the district.
While 98 COVID-19 positive cases were reported in Mysuru on Sunday, the State COVID-19 War Room report dated August 6 said the seven-day average Test Positivity Rate (TPR) in Mysuru was 1.46% against the State’s 1.18%.
Even after lockdown was lifted more than a month ago on July 5, the number of cases continued to decline gradually. Also, there has been a week-on-week decline in the number of cases in Mysuru, according to the COVID-19 State War Room report dated August 6. While 785 cases were reported during the week ending August 6, the previous week saw 864 cases. This was preceded by 966 and 1,236 respectively during the earlier weeks.
