AURANGABAD: The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on Monday ordered blanket closure of all educational institutions, except classes X and XII, till February 28.
The civic administration has also decided not to permit private coaching classes up to Class XI till the end of this month, in the wake fresh surge in Covid-19 cases.
Civic health officer Nita Padalkar said proper precaution can definitely beat the fresh surge in cases. “Restrictions will be also strictly observed at weddings and other gatherings, where assembly of only 50 individuals is permitted,” she said.
Padalkar said that any violation of this norm, along with disregard to other Covid prevention norms such as wearing of face-mask and sanitization, will attract fine of Rs 10,000 at such gatherings.
The civic administration said the concept of containment zone would be back, if necessary, with areas reporting minimum 20 cases being declared as prohibited zone. Also, a sticker carrying awareness message will be affixed on every house that reports positive cases.
Additional municipal commissioner B B Nemane, who chaired a review meeting on Monday, said both RT-PCR test and Antigen testing would scaled up among different target groups.
“Instructions have been issued for speeding up Covid vaccination among health care and frontline workers. All target beneficiaries must undergo necessary immunisation as vaccination for other target age groups is slated to begin in March,” he said.
Savita Mulay, principal of SB Education Society-run Sharada Mandir School, said e-learning was already on at many schools simultaneously with actual conduct of classes. “As per the norms, we will conduct only virtual classes till February 28,” she said.
A day after reporting 201 new cases, Aurangabad on Monday reported 132 fresh cases , taking the total number of confirmed cases to 48,770. It includes1,255 deaths and 941 active cases.