Door-to-door survey as Delhi ramps up response

NEW DELHI:  Amid continuing surge in Covid-19 cases, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday sought to enforce pandemic discipline by meeting representatives of market associations and seeking their cooperation, while assuring he does not want to shut the markets down.

He urged the representatives to provide masks for free to shoppers not wearing them. Parallelly, the government sought to wield the stick, as it provided legal teeth to the penalty of a whopping Rs 2,000 it intends to slap on those flouting the mask norm. To do so, Lt Governor Anil Baijal approved a proposal to amend the Delhi Epidemic Disease Management of Covid-19 Regulations 2020, to insert the penalty. 

Meanwhile, the Delhi government has begun a door-to-door survey to identify people having Covid symptoms. The massive exercise is expected to be completed in five days and cover over 57 lakh people.
In all, 6,608 new cases were detected in Delhi that is already witnessing a third Covid wave, taking the cumulative cases to 5,17,238.

Also, 118 deaths were reported in a 24-hour span. The air quality too continued to be poor with smog choking the city’s lungs. Neighbouring Haryana recorded its highest single-day spike with 3,104 people testing positive. In Maharashtra, the fresh case count is now averaging 5,000 as compared to 2,000-2,500 last week. Wary of a second wave, Mumbai’s schools and colleges will not open till Dec 31. They were earlier slated to reopen on Nov 23. With a steady uptick in fresh cases in Gujarat, night curfew has been imposed in Surat, Rajkot and Vadodara, in addition to Ahmedabad.