The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to relax the coronavirus restrictions in several districts of the state in wake of the receding cases of coronavirus. As per the latest orders from the Yogi government, regular movement will be allowed between 6 am and 10 pm on Saturdays from the coming week. The Sunday restrictions will continue to be in place though.
At present, markets, shops and business establishments are allowed to open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. from Monday to Friday, while Saturday and Sunday are the weekly closure days.
The decision to allow the relaxations on weekends was taken during a review meeting among the officials. Instructions have been issued to district officials by the state's Home Department to ensure that coronavirus appropriate behaviour is followed by people on exempted days.
This move will provide a sigh of relief to traders who were afraid of missing a significant chunk of revenue during the upcoming festive season due to the weekend restrictions.
Notably, there has been a marked improvement in the pandemic situation as 12 districts have no active Covid cases as of now.
Districts with no active cases include Aligarh, Amethi, Chitrakoot, Etah, Firozabad, Gonda, Hathras, Kasganj, Pilibhit, Pratapgarh, Shamli and Sonbhadra while the recovery rate stands at 98.6 per cent.
On Tuesday, 59 of 75 districts did not report even a single fresh Covid case whereas, in the remaining 16 districts, the number of new cases was less than 10.
The state government has also allowed secondary, higher, technical and vocational educational institutions to reopen after Independence Day with 50 per cent attendance.
The chief minister has asked the officials to organise vaccination camps on the premises of universities, schools and colleges for students above 18 years of age.
The chief minister also said that the process of new admissions should be started from classes 6 to 8. Assessing the situation, teaching-learning can be started in these schools from September 1.