Uttarakhand government has decided to implement state-wide lockdown on Saturday and Sunday amid rising number of Covid-19 cases, said chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Friday in Dehradun.
The announcement has come a day after 199 Covid-19 positive cases were reported across the state taking the total number of coronavirus cases to 3,982.
Rawat said, “The number of cases of the virus has increased in the last few days, which is a matter of serious concern. The only way to curb it is by creating a gap and as a result, we have decided to implement state-wide lockdown on Saturday and Sunday.”
He, however, said that guidelines for the same would be decided in a high-level meeting later on Friday.
“We would soon issue the guidelines for it, which will include who would be allowed to enter the state and who would be not. The decision to implement the weekend lockdown is also important as it was also the demand of our trader community that markets should be allowed to open for only five days,” said Rawat.
The chief minister specified that the decision applied only to this week and fresh assessment of the conditions and the necessary containment measures will be made on a weekly basis.
“The decision for the next week would be taken in the next meeting,” said Rawat.
Earlier on Thursday evening, Rawat held discussions with chief secretary and secretary health regarding the spike in cases and had directed them to take necessary actions to curb it.
Uttarakhand on Thursday reported 199 fresh Covid-19 cases, of which maximum 91 were from US Nagar district. Forty-four cases reported were found to be close contacts of earlier detected positive cases. The others had returned to the state from places like Maharashtra, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Delhi-NCR, Uttar Pradesh, Chandigarh and Haryana.
On Thursday, 47 Covid-19 patients were also discharged from hospitals.
The rate of doubling of cases based on the last seven days now stands at 27.19 days, while the infection rate is at 3.99%. The state has so far tested over one lakh samples of which results of over 7400 are awaited.
