Source: Google

By Dikhya Mohanty

With the rising number of Coronavirus cases in Odisha, the Odisha Government announced guidelines for ‘Unlock 2.0’ by relaxing the night curfew hours but continued to the weekend shutdown in 10 districts.

The state has been divided into two zones– Ten districts with more than 50 positive cases have been slotted in Zone 1 and the rest 20 districts as Zone 2.

The night curfew across Odisha will be from 9 pm to 5 am instead of 7 pm to 5 am. The weekend shutdown is applied to the Zone 1 districts (Ganjam, Gajapati, Khurda, Cuttack, Jajpur, Jagatsinghpur, Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and Jharsuguda)

All the religious places, gyms, and cinema halls will be closed until 31st July and, the educational institutions/training/coaching institutions will not be allowed to open till 31st August.

But, the conduct of examinations and evaluations will be authorized. The hotels and restaurants will be permitted to operate as per the SOPs issued by the Ministry of Tourism.

Restaurant service in hotels will be open for in-house guests and home delivery/takeaways only.

Although the Odisha government further stated that the Local authorities such as Municipal Corporations and district administration will take a call on allowing shopping malls to operate during Unlock 2.0 with proper restrictions.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation notified that after an evaluation of the situation the decision whether to open the shopping malls in the city will be taken. Shopping malls have been closed in Odisha from 16th March.

Odisha was one of the few States where shopping malls were closed during Unlock 1.0. The Centre’s Unlock 1.0 plan, had allowed malls, restaurants, and religious places to open from June 8, except those in containment zones.

Opening of malls can lead to the spread of the virus very easily with the spiking number of COVID-19 cases.