E-passes for essential services valid for entire duration of weekend, night curfew, clarifies DDMA

Delhi on Tuesday reported 21,259 fresh Covid-19 cases with a positivity rate of 25.65 per cent, informed the city's health bulletin.

The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) gave a clarification on Wednesday stating that e-passes issued for essential movement or exempted categories will be valid during the entire duration of imposition of weekend and night curfew.

Night and weekend curfews are in place in Delhi to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease.

"As per the previous orders, movement of the individuals for the activities specified as 'Essential goods and Services' or 'Exempted category' as prescribed in DDMA order have been allowed for movement during night curfew and weekend curfew with the possession of e-pass (in soft or hard copy) only," the DDMA said in an official order, according to news agency PTI.

"In this context, it is clarified that e-pass possessed by a person on or after January 4 ( from the date of issuance of DDMA order) for movement connected to 'Essential goods and services' or 'Exempted category', shall be valid during the entire period of imposition of night curfew and weekend curfew," it added.

The DDMA, in its latest guidelines, ordered all private offices except those falling under the exempted category to shift to work from home. The dine-in services in all restaurants and bars have also been suspended and only take-away/food delivery services have been permitted.

Further, night and weekend curfews are already in place in the to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease.

A day ago Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had assured the citizens of the national capital of not imposing a lockdown even as Covid-19 cases have been seeing an upward trend over the past few days due to the presence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

Delhi on Tuesday reported 21,259 fresh Covid-19 cases with a positivity rate of 25.65 per cent, informed the city's health bulletin. With the addition of 21,259 new cases, the active caseload in the city mounted to 74,881 which is the highest in the past eight months, according to the bulletin.

Delhi also reported 23 deaths, taking the total number of fatalities to 25,200 here.

So far, a total of 15,90,155 Covid-19 cases have been reported in the national capital.