Maharashtra to ease COVID-19 restrictions after May 31? Here's what minister Vijay Wadettiwar says

Maharashtra state government can give a waiver on the stringent restrictions imposed under "Break the Chain" across the state including Mumbai after May 31.

Image Courtesy: Reuters

Mumbai: India has been witnessing the second wave of coronavirus. This wave is proving to be much more infectious and dangerous in comparison with the first one. Maharashtra remains to be the worst affected state in the country. In a recent development, the Maharashtra state government can give a waiver on the stringent restrictions imposed under "Break the Chain" across the state including Mumbai after Monday (May 31).

According to the reports, these waivers given by the government can be initiated in multiple stages. Believe it or not, the government does not want to remove the lockdown in one go, but slowly it wants to minimize it.

Cabinet minister in the Maharashtra government Vijay Vettiwar said that "the government will execute it in several stages, at least 3-4 stages. But there will not be any exemption in the red zone areas of the state. "

"There are currently 14 District under the Red Zone in Maharashtra, there are more cases of coronavirus here than anywhere else. In such a situation, if we remove the restrictions then, it will be difficult. If you want to minimize it, we have to consider hot spots and create more containment zones, in such areas we will need to impose strict rules like lockdown. The government will reduce the restrictions in areas where the corona cases are decreasing rapidly," said Wadettiwar.

Talking about the local train, Vijay Wadettiwar said that "it is not safe to start all the local trains as the trains carry a lot of crowd and there are very high chances of infections because of it. We will analyse the situation and take the decision accordingly."

India's active caseload has decreased since its last peak on May 10 when it was 40,00,000. India's total active caseload came down to 27,20,716 on Monday. 

The country conducted a total of 19,28,127 Covid tests in the last 24 hours and cumulatively 33,05,36,064 tests have been done so far. The cumulative positivity rate was 8.09 per cent on Monday and the weekly positivity rate has also declined to 12.66 per cent.

Ten states account for 72.23 per cent of the new recoveries with Kerala (37,316) on top followed by Karnataka (35,573), Maharashtra (29,177), Tamil Nadu (25,196), Andhra Pradesh (20,109), West Bengal (19,429)), Rajasthan (16,520), Uttar Pradesh (14,086), Odisha (11,627) and Haryana (9,480).