The State government has relaxed COVID-19 curfew uniformly in all the 13 districts from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. with effect from July 13 and ordered that the commercial establishments should be shut by 9 p.m. The restrictions will come into force at 10 p.m. and be in vogue till 6 a.m.
The decision to ease the curfew was taken at a review meeting on COVID, chaired by Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, wherein he observed that the government felt the need for curfew relaxation owing to the fall in daily positivity rate below 5%.
The meeting resolved to make wearing face masks in public places mandatory and to impose a penalty of ₹100 in case of violation. Besides, it had been decided to order the closure of shops and establishments for two to three days as a punishment for flouting the norms.
Mr. Jagan instructed the officials to set up a WhatsApp number for sending photos of people violating the rules and to strictly enforce the prohibitory orders under Section.144 to contain the spread of the pandemic.
Testing
Mr. Jagan ordered that only those suffering from fever and other symptoms should be tested, and the establishment of oxygen generation plants be completed at the earliest to deal with the likely resurgence of the pandemic.
The Chief Minister instructed the officials to focus on vaccination of both government and private school teachers depending on the availability of vaccines, and to complete it before the reopening of schools.
He cautioned against being complacent about the prevalence of non-COVID diseases, like dengue and other viral fevers, during the monsoon season especially in the Agency areas.
COVID cases
Officials told the Chief Minisetr that there were 28,680 active cases at present and 5,695 patients were being treated in hospitals and 4,976 people in COVID Care Centres.
The recovery rate increased to 97.83% and positivity rate decreased to 2.91%. The positivity rate was less than 3% in seven districts. A total of 3,876 black fungus cases were registered till date, out of which 324 persons died and 2,500 were discharged.
As regards vaccination, 1,31,43,873 people had been vaccinated so far (96,83,544 got a single dose and 34,60,329 took two doses).
