Centre issues new COVID-19 guidelines for malls, religious places, restaurants

New Delhi: The Central government on Thursday (March 4) issued new guidelines for the prevention of COVID-19 spread. Adding to the previous guidelines, including mandatory wearing of face masks and social distancing at public places like malls, restaurants and religious places, the central government has issued a fresh list again. 

The Centre directed the shopping malls to have adequate manpower for ensuring social distance norms and also added that all employees working at these places are at higher risks of coming in contact with the virus. Keeping this in mind, the government has asked these individuals to take extra precautions.

Guidelines for shopping malls:

1) Adequate manpower to be deployed for ensuring social distance norms

2) All employees with higher risks to take extra precautions.

3) They should not be exposed to front-line work requiring direct contact with the public.

4) Separate entry and exit for visitors, workers and goods\supplies to be ensured.

Other than the shopping malls, the government has also put emphasis upon implementation of the new set of guidelines in the restaurants, including takeaways to be encouraged instead of dine-in and food delivery should be done duly by following COVID precautions. The restaurants should also make sure proper thermal screening procedures are in place for home delivery staff, as they are at higher risks as well. 

Guidelines for restaurants:

1) Encourage takeaways instead of dine-in, food delivery to be done duly following covid precautions.

2) Thermal screening of home delivery staff prior to allowing them for home deliveries.

3) proper crowd management in parking lots and outside the premises duly following social distancing norms.

4) Maintaining physical distance of 6 feet while queuing up for entry and inside the restaurant.

These new guidelines have come into effect from March 1 itself. The government has also included a list for religious places, including mandatory hand hygiene and thermal screening procedure at entry. The order also added that only asymptomatic people will be allowed to enter religious places. 

Guidelines for religious places:

1) Entrance to have mandatory hand hygiene and thermal screening procedure.

2) Only asymptomatic people will be allowed.

3) People without face mask will not be allowed.

4) Posters on preventive measures about coronavirus to be displayed at prominent places

5) Staggering of visitors to be done.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday announced that six states, including Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Karnataka, continued to report a surge in new COVID-19 cases on a daily basis. These six states account for 85.51 percent of fresh cases. It also added that a total of 17,407 new infections have been registered in a day.

However, the other 23 states and UTs have not reported any COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours. These include Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Puducherry, Assam, Lakshadweep, Nagaland, Sikkim, Ladakh, Tripura, Andaman Nicobar Islands, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Arunachal Pradesh.