New Delhi, May 1: The central government has extended lockdown by two more weeks, the Ministry of Home Affairs said on Friday.
The lockdown will be effective from May 4.
A press release issued by the MHA spells out new guidelines regulating activities during this period based on risk profiling of the country’s districts. MHA’s new guidelines divide the country into red, orange and green zones depending on coronavirus cases being reported.
The guidelines are mainly an attempt to restart a completely stalled economy, and provide some relaxations in green and orange zones.
Red zones are Covid-19 hotspots, while green zones are districts that have either no confirmed cases, or have not reported any case in the last 21 days.
The classification of districts as red-zones will take into account the total number of active cases, doubling rate of confirmed cases, extent of testing and surveillance feedback from the districts.
Those districts that are neither red- nor green- zones will be classified as orange zones.
The guidelines put a blanket ban on some activities throughout the country—air, rail and metro travel; and inter-state movement by road; running of schools, colleges, and other educational and training or coaching institutions; hospitality services, including hotels and restaurants; places of large public gatherings such as cinema halls, malls, gymnasiums, and sports complexes; social, political, cultural and other kinds of gatherings; and, religious places or places of public worship.
“Shops in urban areas, for non-essential goods, are not allowed in malls, markets and market complexes. However, all standalone (single) shops, neighborhood (colony) shops and shops in residential complexes are permitted to remain open in urban areas, without any distinction of essential and non-essential,” the press release said.
Private offices can operate with up to 33 per cent of its total strength, with the remaining persons working from home, the press release said. However, most of the commercial and private establishments have been allowed in the Red Zones. These include print and electronic media, IT and IT enabled services, data and call centres, cold storage and warehousing services, private security and facility management services, and services provided by self-employed persons, except for barbers etc, the release stated.
