While hotels and restaurants can operate till 10 pm across the state at 50 percent seating capacity from August 15, according to the state government's order dated August 11, under the new clause restaurant staff has to be fully vaccinated.

The Maharashtra government has extended restaurant timings from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., but has added a new clause which the industry says is unrealistic.

While hotels and restaurants can operate till 10 pm across the state at 50 percent seating capacity from August 15, according to the state government's order dated August 11, under the new clause restaurant staff has to be fully vaccinated.

And this is not going down well with the industry.

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"Upon reading the final points we realized that it can be far more draconian because now the staff has to be double vaccinated plus 14 days to work in the restaurants. This is not possible because the rate at which vaccination is going, I think the only people who are vaccinated in the last week of April are eligible for it now," Anurag Katiyar, President, National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) told Moneycontrol.

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A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

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There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

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Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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Not so fine dine: Maharashtra extends restaurant timings but conditions apply

Restaurants in Maharashtra will be allowed to open up 10 p.m. from August 15, provided their staff has been fully vaccinated, but owners of eateries say this requirement will force many of them to shut down because most workers are still not eligible for the second jab.

While hotels and restaurants can operate till 10 pm across the state at 50 percent seating capacity from August 15, according to the state government's order dated August 11, under the new clause restaurant staff has to be fully vaccinated.

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