Delhi closes dine-in restaurants to control spiralling growth in COVID cases

Days after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal brought in night and weekend curfews, falling short of a complete lockdown, restaurants were told to stop dine-in facility on Monday as the national capital struggles to contain a sudden spike in COVID cases.

The Delhi government though has permitted the restaurants to provide home delivery and takeaways. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Monday (January 10) in view of the rising coronavirus cases.

Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Health Minister Satyender Jain, Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, AIIMS chief Dr Randeep Guleria and NITI Aayog member Dr VK Paul were among those who attended the meeting and discussed all possible ways to implement the guidelines issued till date to curb the spread of the virus.

Also read: India’s COVID hospitalization rate 5-10% in third wave: Centre

Lieutenant Governor Baijal said after the meeting, “The DDMA meeting decided to close 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.”

Additionally, the Delhi Health Department was advised to make adequate arrangements for additional manpower in hospitals and to scale up the vaccination efforts including for those in age group of 15-18 years, said Baijal.

Weekend and night curfews are already in place in the national capital.

On Monday, Delhi recorded 19,166 new cases with a positivity rate as high as 25 per cent. A total of 17 people died of the infection. Experts now say that the spike in cases is led by the highly contagious Omicron variant.