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After a two-weeks, Chennai’s residents got a chance to go shopping for fresh fruits and vegetable as Tamil Nadu eased the lockdown in certain districts, including the city, from Monday.
Electrical and hardware shops also witnessed brisk business as plumbers and electricians were back in action and households got a chance to catch up on routine maintenance.
On Saturday, the State government extended the lockdown for one more week but with two sets of relaxations - for the 11 Covid hotspot districts and the rest of Tamil Nadu. It will be in force till June 14.
While the daily Corona cases have been on the decline in the State, districts such as Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Tirupur, Erode, Salem, Karur, Namakkal, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam and Mayiladurai continue to see higher number of cases. In these districts standalone provision stores, groceries, meat/fish stalls will be allowed to open from 6 am to 5 pm.
While all these will be allowed in other districts, there are also certain other relaxations provided to those districts where the cases are low. Security agencies, housekeeping in apartments, electricians, plumbers and motor technicians are allowed to work. The government has allowed automobile mechanic shops, electrical goods, hardware stores, stationary shops and automobile spares to operate from 6 am to 5 pm.
Taxi/auto can operate with e-registration, the release said. ePass is mandatory for travel within Chennai, and also between districts.
‘Continue precautions’
“We are still in the middle of the second wave, down trending of infection in Chennai and many districts in Tamilnadu does not mean it’s over, we still have a long way to go in this. So continue to take precautions, with relaxation from today take care of yourself, go out only if it’s necessary,” Vijayanand, a Covid data analyst, in a tweet.
Meanwhile, the number of new Coronavirus cases in Tamil Nadu declined further on Monday to 19,448 (on Sunday it was 20,421).
The number of Covid-19 positive persons discharged was 31,360 to take the number of active cases to 2.32 lakh and 351 succumbed to the infection.
Over 1.70 lakh samples were tested.
Coimbatore reported the highest number of cases with 2,564 followed by Chennai with 1,530; Erode 1,646; Tirupur 1,027; and the other districts reported less than 1,000 cases.
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