SRINAGAR: The Srinagar administration on Tuesday evening announced lifting of curfew as the situation here remained incident free but strict restrictions would continue in areas which have seen a spike in COVID-19 cases, officials said.

An order was issued by Deputy Commissioner Shahid Choudhury on Tuesday saying that after assessing the situation in the area, it has been decided to prematurely end the curfew which was slated to continue till Wednesday night.

The order, however, states that restrictions ordered earlier under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code and the Disaster Management Act, in view of the prevailing situation due to the COVID-19 disease, will remain enforced across the district as directed through an order issued on July 31.

It states there shall be restrictions on public movement including transport and that commercial and other establishments shall remain closed.

Meanwhile, Choudhury has said avoiding public gatherings is an important part of the efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and urged the general public to ensure strict compliance with all preventive guidelines and protocols that the government has issued in regard to it.

He has directed for strict adherence to restrictions as ordered.

The administration on Tuesday decided to open religious premises and places of worship from August 16 but extended other standard operating procedures for COVID-19 containment till August 31.

"Major decision by J&K Government. All religious places and places of worship to open in Jammu & Kashmir from August 16, 2020. Religious processions and large religious gatherings remain strictly prohibited," government spokesperson Rohit Kansal said in a tweet.

According to an order issued by the chief secretary, a separate SOP will be issued for opening of religious places.

Meanwhile, the administration has declared all districts of Kashmir except Bandipora as red zones while Ramban is the only district in Jammu division to be included in this category.

Doda and Kishtwar districts are placed in green zones while rest of the seven districts in Jammu region and Bandipora district have been categorised as orange zones.

The government has asked the people to follow the SOPs for respective zones or face penal action in case of any violation.

Red zones are the ones with a large number of coronavirus cases while the orange zones have lesser positive cases.

A green zone is one that has not reported any COVID-19 positive case in 28 days.

The government has already classified the districts into red, orange and green zones depending on the severity of COVID-19 spread in the areas and declared the entire Kashmir region, except Bandipora, as a "red zone".

The categorisation has been done to implement restrictions after August 5, when the current phase of lockdown in the union territory ends, according to an order issued by the chairperson of the State Executive Committee.

The order declared all districts of Kashmir, except Bandipora, and Ramban district of Jammu as red zones.

Kathua, Samba, Bandipora, Reasi, Udhampur, Poonch, Rajouri and Jammu districts are in orange zone and Doda and Kishtwar are in green zone.

The Lakhanpur containment zone on the national highway will be a red/containment zone with a 500-metre buffer, the order stated.

It said the classification of districts has been done after a detailed review of the COVID situation with top officials, and it will be reviewed periodically.

The review included the recent spike in new cases in view of the movement of people to J&K and between districts.

The state on Tuesday recorded 390 COVID-19 cases, taking the total number of infections to 22,396, while 10 fatalities in the last 24 hours pushed the death toll from the disease to 417, officials said.

They said all the 10 deaths were reported from the Kashmir Valley.

The valley accounts for 387 of the total deaths while 30 fatalities have so far been reported from the Jammu region, the officials said.

Of the fresh cases, 152 were from the Jammu region and 238 from the valley, they said.

There are 7,123 active COVID-19 cases in the UT, while 14,856 patients have so far recovered from the infection, they added.

The cases detected on Tuesday include 48 people who had recently returned to Jammu and Kashmir.

The officials said Srinagar district in central Kashmir recorded a maximum of 99 new cases followed by 41 in Jammu distriuct and 37 in Anantnag district of south Kashmir.

Meanwhile, Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla on Tuesday directed authorities in Jammu and Kashmir to focus on reducing the mortality rate among the critically ill COVID-19 patients in the Union territory.

Bhalla, while reviewing the COVID death audit report for Jammu and Kashmir at a meeting through video conference, observed that most of the critical patients die within 72 hours of hospitalization.

"He emphasized on the need to tackle the issue," an official spokesman said after the meeting.

Bhalla chaired a high level meeting to review the management of COVID-19 pandemic in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Chief Secretary B V R Subrahmanyam and other top officials of the health and medical education departments were present in the meeting.

The Home secretary was informed that J&K is performing reasonably well in mitigating COVID-19 pandemic with 53,323 tests per million population, 1746 cases per million population, doubling rate of 27.2 days, 3.3 per cent positivity rate, 61.3 per cent recovery rate, and 1.8 per cent mortality rate.

On testing capacities, the chief secretary said the related infrastructure has been ramped up and against the WHO recommendation of 140 tests per million population per day, the UT is now conducting 900 tests per million per day.

For this, five additional testing laboratories, four CBNAAT (Cartridge-Based Nucleic Acid Amplification Test) facilities and 15 TRUENAT laboratories were established in government medical institutions, besides, augmenting the RTPCR tests with Rapid Antigen Tests.

Further, the government is also in the process of procuring three COBAS-6800 fully automated systems to enhance per day testing capacity, which is currently at 12,000 tests per day, the spokesperson said.

While sharing the data on surge of bilateral pneumonia cases in the valley, the chief secretary sought help of the Union government through a technical team of experts for analysing such cases and advising on probable containment of its spread.

Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday recorded 390 COVID-19 cases, taking the total number of infections to 22,396, while 10 fatalities in the last 24 hours pushed the death toll from the disease to 417, officials said.

(With PTI Inputs)