The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday announced that it will impose a complete lockdown every Sunday to curb the rising number of Covid-19 cases, dominated by the Omicron variant. Moreover, a night curfew has been imposed starting Thursday, January 6, from 10pm to 5am.
The Sunday lockdown will begin from January 9 and non-essential activities will be completely banned. However, the state government has permitted restaurants to operate food delivery services on the lockdown days between 7am and 10pm.
The decision was taken after a high-level meeting chaired by chief minister MK Stalin with state health minister Ma Subramanian and other senior health officials.
Several other restrictions including a closure of creche, play schools, coaching centres has also been imposed.
There will be no classes for kindergarten. Online classes will be conducted for students from classes 1 to 9 and physical classes for students of classes 10 to 12, the government stated.
Moreover, public buses, metro and local trains will run on 50 per cent of the seating capacity. Amusement parks will be closed on all days, while people will be allowed to walk on beaches with proper Covid-19 norms.
The government decided to close all places of worship from Friday to Sunday to avoid crowding and all Pongal-related activities have been put off.
{{/usCountry}}The government decided to close all places of worship from Friday to Sunday to avoid crowding and all Pongal-related activities have been put off.
{{/usCountry}}According to reports, the state government will also conduct mega vaccination camps every Saturday.
Tamil Nadu registered 2,731 Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, as per the latest available data, including 121 cases of the Omicron variant. The daily infections have been on a rise for the past week and jumped by over 1,000 cases since the previous day.
The state had recorded 1,728 new cases on Monday.
Five districts, with the capital city of Chennai leading the chart, accounted for the majority of new infections, pushing the state tally to 27,55,587, the health department said.
Nine more people died due to the viral infection, taking the death toll to 36,805, a department bulletin said.
Those who tested positive today included 48 returnees from domestic and overseas locations.
The sharpest increase in fresh infections was reported from Chennai with 1,489 cases, followed by Chengalpet with 290 cases, 147 in Tiruvallur, 120 in Coimbatore and 105 in Vellore.