After curbs on restaurants, now Delhi orders WFH for private offices; Kejriwal rules out lockdown

Employees at private firms in New Delhi will have to mandatory switch to ‘Work From Home’ to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the National Capital.

An order issued by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), on Tuesday has instructed the closure of all private offices in Delhi.

Earlier, private offices could function with half their employees in office and the rest at home.

In the revised guidelines issued by the DDMA, only those private offices will be allowed to stay open which fall under the essential services/exempted category.

According to the order, these are the companies which are exempted: • Private banks • Offices of companies providing essential services • Insurance/Mediclaim companies • Pharmaceutical company offices needed for management of production/distribution • RBI regulated entities • All non-banking financial corporations • All micro-finance institutions • Offices of advocates if operations of courts, tribunals are on • Courier services

READ DDMA’S FULL ORDER HERE

DDMA Order No 509 Dt 11.01.21 by Roshneesh K’Maneck on Scribd

The order for private firms comes a day after DDMA had prohibited dine-in service at restaurants but allowed takeaways.

As per previous rules, restaurants were allowed to operate dine-in facility at 50 percent of their seating capacity from 8 am to 10 pm. Bars in the city were also permitted to open with 50 percent seating capacity from 12 noon to 10 pm.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday ruled out lockdown in the National Capital.

Speaking to reporters, chief minister Kejriwal said, “We are expecting that the city would report somewhere around 20,000-22,000 new COVID-19 cases in Delhi. The positivity rate has been around 24-25 percent for the past two days. We are enforcing strict restrictions like night curfew in Delhi out of compulsion.”

The chief minister and Delhi health minister Satyendar Jai visited LNJP hospital to take stock of preparation to combat the spread of COVID-19 in the city.

He further said that most cases of coronavirus during the third wave are showing mild symptoms unlike the second wave, which was caused by the life-taking Delta variant. Omicron variant of COVID-19 is less virulent but highly contagious, he added.

Talking about the COVID-19 patients admitted to the LNJP hospital, he said, “Out of the 136 patients, 130 came to hospital for getting treatment of other diseases and contracted the virus incidentally.”

He further added, “Delhi has the capacity to set up 37,000 beds with 11,000 ICU beds.”

The Delhi chief minister requested the Central government representatives, who attended the DDMA meeting, to enforce restrictions in the NCR region also. (ANI)

Lieutenant-Governor Anil Baijal, who had chaired a meeting on the COVID-19 curbs on Monday, had tweeted: “In view of the increase in positive cases it was decided to close the restaurants and bars and to allow ’take away’ facility only. It was also decided to allow operation of only one weekly market per day per zone.”

The new restrictions came after the National Capital logged 17 more deaths due to COVID-19 and 19,166 infections in a day. The positivity rate had risen to 25 percent, the highest since 4 May last year, according to the city health department’s data on Monday.

A total of 1,912 COVID patients are in hospitals. Of these, 65 are on ventilator support, government data showed. The city currently has 65,803 active cases of which 44,028 are in home isolation.

With inputs from agencies

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