BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Sunday, August 8, 2021 sealed the city’s biggest non-vegetarian food market at Unit-IV for violation of weekend shutdown norms. A team lead by BMC additional commissioner (enforcement) Laxmikant Sethi visited the market in the morning and sealed it for an indefinite period. Sethi said they were forced to seal the market as it remained crowded with business as usual despite weekend shutdown.
The civic body has also set up barricades at the entry and exit points of the market to separate it from the vegetable and grocery market and requested citizens to strictly comply with the Covid norms. The raid will also continue in markets in south, west and north zones of the city on Monday to ensure proper implementation of the Covid guidelines, he said.
During June when the market was sealed over violation of Covid safety guidelines and social distancing norms, the vendors and traders had given undertaking to operate with strict adherence to the government order. But the violations continue unabated.
“Such behaviour is deterrent to the prevention and control mechanism adopted by the civic body to check spread of the virus. It may also lead to lose of confidence among those following the guidelines properly,” said Municipal Commissioner Sanjay Singh and urged the traders to follow Covid guidelines and weekend shutdown norms to avoid closure of shops.
BMC officials said while the test positivity rate (TPR) in the city has remained below three per cent, over 200 cases are being reported daily. As many as 264 new cases were recorded in the last 24 hours pushing the active case tally of the city to 2,824.
1,243 new cases, 69 deaths in State
Bhubaneswar: Odisha added 1,243 new Covid-19 cases and 69 deaths taking the tally to 9,87,070 and death toll 6,435 on Sunday. Khurda reported the highest of 399 new infections followed by Cuttack (177). There were no new cases in Koraput district while 27 others registered below 100 cases each. The TPR dropped to 1.8 pc from two pc a couple of days back. As many as 69,427 tests, including 21,556 RT-PCR tests, were conducted. The highest 21 Covid deaths were reported from Khurda.