A day after a food delivery person working for a Malviya Nagar restaurant tested positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) -- leading to residents of at least 72 households being put under home quarantine -- the city administration is scrambling to put in place rules and standard operating procedures to ensure proper safety norms for local delivery firms and stand-alone restaurants in the Capital.
While larger food delivery chains and essential supplies providers have strict processes to ensure the safety of their deliveries, smaller firms may fall below the radar, senior civic officials said, highlighting the need for standardised norms.
“This incident shows that modalities should be chalked out under which the employer must issue fitness certificates to all its delivery persons and other staff at least once a week after proper health checks,” said BM Mishra, district magistrate of the south Delhi district, from where the case emerged.
“All our Covid containment efforts will go in vain if there is no safety mechanism for the thousands of delivery persons operating in the city,” he added.
Other district magistrates also called for protocols to be put in place. One district magistrate said that “if rules are laid down, people will have clear directions on what to do”; while Central Delhi district magistrate Nidhi Srivastava said the “daily temperature screening of all workers should be mandatory in these outlets”.
Police on Thursday said that the man was an employee of Box 8, and the pizza was from the kitchen of the adjoining restaurant MOJO Pizza, also located in the same building. Police said that apart from serving its own menu, Box 8 has a tie-up with multiple food chains.
{{/usCountry}}Police on Thursday said that the man was an employee of Box 8, and the pizza was from the kitchen of the adjoining restaurant MOJO Pizza, also located in the same building. Police said that apart from serving its own menu, Box 8 has a tie-up with multiple food chains.
{{/usCountry}}In a statement on its official Twitter account on Thursday, Box 8 said: “After all precautions and vigilance, in an unfortunate turn of events, a delivery partner of our Malviya Nagar kitchen in south Delhi has tested Covid positive yesterday….The delivery partner has been keeping well and getting the required medical attention. All his co-workers have been quarantined and we have shut down the Malviya Nagar kitchen in South Delhi for the next 14 days.”
Mishra, the South Delhi DM, said the delivery person had not been feeling well for nearly a month and had visited several hospitals. “He had a cough but some hospitals had dismissed it as common flu. But when he didn’t recover, he went to Safdarjung Hospital for a check-up from where he was referred to RML. He tested positive for Covid-19 on April 14,” said Mishra.
Government officials said at least 16 employees and the owner of Box 8 have been put under institutional quarantine in Chhatarpur. The delivery person, who tested positive on April 14, is at the Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality hospital in Tahirpur for treatment.
Larger firms involved in aggregated food delivery and chain restaurants said they were already following strict guidelines and the norms for their staff were assiduously enforced.
Domino’s Pizza, a food chain, said it was the first company to start the “zero contact delivery” to contain the spread of the virus and that it was taking several other precautionary measures.
“We would like to reassure all our customers that in these uncertain times, we are taking all possible precautions to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees and customers. As a rule, all our Safe Delivery Experts are 100% company employees and are following heightened sanitisation and hygiene protocols in all our restaurants. All employees in the stores are being temperature screened every day and they follow a mandatory hourly hand wash protocol for a minimum of 20 seconds. We are deep sanitising our restaurants as well as delivery bikes, boxes and pizza hot bags every 4 hours. Besides, we have moved all our deliveries to Zero Contact Delivery thereby avoiding any physical contact with the customer. Additionally, all our Safe Delivery Experts are wearing gloves and masks to ensure the safety of our customers,” it said in a statement.
Food delivery aggregator Zomato said orders delivered by the restaurants directly were sometimes placed on the Zomato platform and it was not sure if this delivery person had delivered any such orders while he was infected.
“At Zomato’s end, we are leaving no stone unturned to make sure that our customers, our delivery partners, and our restaurant partners are safe. Covid-19 could happen to anyone - and it is near impossible for all of us to completely isolate ourselves, especially when we need outside support for essentials such as food... We believe that none of our riders should and would knowingly keep working if they knew they were infected with Covid-19,” the company said in a statement.
Another food delivery platform, Swiggy, said it regularly shared guidelines on best practices with its delivery partners.
“We regularly send reminders to our delivery partners on best practices of respiratory hygiene, proper method and frequency of washing hands, as well as identification of associated symptoms. A series of videos capturing pertinent details shot in multiple languages are being circulated as a ready reckoner. We have also started the distribution of N95 masks to all our delivery partners in the affected cities, free of cost,” the company said in a statement.
There are least 25,000 food delivery persons in the national Capital, estimates the RedSeer consulting firm. The number of active riders, however, has gone down after the Covid outbreak and the nationwide lockdown, it said.