Amid the rising Covid-19 cases in some of the states, Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla on Friday wrote to all states and UTs after extending Covid-19 guidelines till March and urged to take all Covid-related precautions.
In his letter, Bhalla said that there is a need for maintaining caution and strict surveillance to fully overcome the coronavirus pandemic. As per the Ministry’s data on Friday, there are 1,55,996 active cases in India at present after 12,179 patients were discharged in a day.
On Friday, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the existing COVID-19 guidelines will remain in force till March 31. According to the existing guidelines, cinema halls and theatres are allowed to operate with more people while swimming pools have also been permitted for use by all. Moreover, there is no restriction on inter-state and intra-state movement of persons and goods including those for cross-land-border trade under treaties with neighbouring countries.
In a statement, the MHA has advised all the states and union territories to speed up the vaccination of the target population so as to break the chain of transmission and overcome the pandemic.