Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday ordered the imposition of a night curfew in Bhopal and Indore from Wednesday (March 17) till further orders. Calling the surge in the COVID cases alarming, the chief minister said that his government doesn’t want to go for lockdown but imposing night curfew in some places, including Indore and Bhopal seems unavoidable.
In addition to that, the authorities also ordered that markets in eight cities-Jabalpur, Gwalior, Ujjain, Ratlam, Burhanpur, Chhindwara, Betul, Khargone to shut at 10 pm from March 17. "There won't be curfew in these cities," the order stated.
Meanwhile, the Gujarat government on Tuesday decided to increase the night curfew timings in four metros to contain the surge in COVID-19 cases.
The timings of the night curfew have been increased by two hours, starting 17 March. The curfew will remain in force in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot from 10 pm to 6 am, an official statement said. The restrictions will be in place till March 31.
Earlier, the curfew timings were from 12 am to 6 am.
Amid a massive surge in the Coronavirus caseload, the Centre warned Maharashtra on Tuesday that the state is witnessing the beginning of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and asked the state government to scale up the pace of vaccination campaign, especially in districts witnessing a sharp increase in infections.
Issuing a letter to Maharashtra's Chief Secretary Sitaram Kunte, which is based on the assessment of the central team's visit last week, the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan has urged the state to bring down its positivity rate and step up contact-tracing.
On the other hand, Tamil Nadu also reported a significant spike in COVID-19 cases over the past 10 days. Chief Secretary Rajeev Ranjan has assessed the situation and asked authorities to intensify prevention efforts and also crackdown on people who don't wear masks and violate COVID-19 safety guidelines.
