Centre suggests imposing night curfew in Kerala, Maharashtra amid rise in COVID cases

While taking stock of the OCIVD-19 situation in the country and the rise in cases in Maharashtra and Kerala, Union Home Secretary suggested considering night curfews in areas with high COVID-19 cases.

New Delhi: Taking stock of the COVID-19 situation in Kerala and Maharashtra and reviewing steps taken by the two state governments to keep the rising novel coronavirus cases in check, Union Home Secretary suggested considering night curfews in areas with high COVID-19 cases.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said in a press statement released on Thursday after a meeting with the two states, said, "More efforts would be required to arrest the increase in infections."

Further, the ministry asked the states to "explore the possibility of placing night curfew in areas of high positivity".

"This would require adequate intervention in geographical areas having higher infection, through measures such as contact tracing, vaccination drives and COVID-appropriate behaviour."

Also, the states were assured of additional vaccine supplies. India has so far administered more than 61 crore vaccine doses, giving at least one dose to more than half of its eligible adults.

The COVID-19 cases have mounted again in the last three days after a five-month-low in the middle of the month. Kerala has been reporting the maximum of cases accounting for nearly 60% of the new cases in the past week and more than half of the total active cases. It is followed by Maharashtra constituting 16% cases of the total country-wide numbers.

The meeting was attended by Dr VK Paul, Member (Health) of NITI Aayog, Secretary of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Director of National Centre for Communicable Disease (NCDC) and Chief Secretaries and Directors General of Police of Kerala and Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, India on Friday reported 44,658 new COVID-19 infections taking the total to 3,26,03,188, the most in the world after the United States. Deaths rose by 496 to 436,861.