Mizoram eases some COVID-19 curbs

All shops and marketplaces will now remain open daily across the state strictly adhering to COVID appropriate behaviour to ensure seamless economic activities.According to the new guidelines issued on Friday all places of worship will now reopen across the state during the day and evening hours with 50 seating capacity.

Mizoram has eased certain COVID-19 curbs following a gradual decline in daily cases of the pandemic and the union home ministry's directive to all states to ease restrictions due to significant improvement in the situation across the country, an official on Saturday.

Night curfew, which has been imposed for nearly two years in the state capital Aizawl has been lifted, he said. All shops and marketplaces will now remain open daily across the state strictly adhering to COVID appropriate behaviour to ensure seamless economic activities.

According to the new guidelines issued on Friday all places of worship will now reopen across the state during the day and evening hours with 50 seating capacity. Earlier, places of worship were closed in red zone areas which have a substantial number of COVID-19 cases.

Picnic spots, theatres, beauty parlours and spas, gymnasium will be allowed to open and trekking, hiking, leisure activities or outing and adventure sports, which were earlier banned are now permitted in all parts of the state. Sporting competition or tournament is also now allowed without any audience, the guidelines said.

Hotels, homestays, tourist lodges, guest houses, restaurants will also now remain open with 50 per cent capacity, it said.

Apart from groceries and fair price shops (public distribution system), shops dealing with other goods and market places will now remain open in all parts of the state, it said. Schools will, however, continue to remain closed for classes 1 to 9 and 11 and colleges and universities will also continue to remain shut and public or social gatherings, anniversaries and birthday celebrations will still not be allowed, it added. Meanwhile, Aizawl district administration on Saturday issued separate orders lifting night curfew and withdrawing red zone classification within the jurisdiction of Aizawl Municipal Corporation.

Other district headquarters or towns are expected to follow suit, its official said.

A health department bulletin said Mizoram reported 1,151 new COVID-19 cases and one fatality since Friday.

The COVID-19 countdown now stands at 2,04,476, of which 8,745 are active, while the toll reached 642 on Saturday, it said.

At least 1,173 people have recovered from the infection in the last 24 hours, taking the total recoveries to 1,95,089, it said and added that Mizoram has so far tested more than 17.88 lakh samples for COVID-19, 5,229 of them on Friday.

According to state immunisation officer Lalmuanawma Jongte, over eight lakh people have been inoculated and 6.42 lakh of them have been fully inoculated till date.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)