NEW DELHI: Amid growing cases of Omicron variant of COVID-19 in the city, authorities have intensified enforcement of Covid appropriate behaviour and fined over 68,000 people this month till December 18 for violating norms such as wearing of masks, maintaining social distancing etc., official data showed.
Last month in November, the Delhi government's enforcement teams had issued challans against 1,12,076 people for violating Covid appropriate behaviour norms. While the police had issued 4675 fines against people for not wearing masks in the same month.
According to data provided by the Delhi government, enforcement teams of the government and Delhi police cumulatively fined 68,833 people for not wearing masks and not following social distancing norms between December 1 and 18.
"Delhi government teams challaned 66,85 people for not adhering to COVID appropriate behaviour this month till December 18. While Delhi Police fined 1983 people for similar offence till December 16. So by the end of this month we may cross the number of people fined in November," a government official said.
Delhi has recorded 54 cases of Omicron variant so far. Delhi tops the country jointly with Maharashtra in terms of Omicron variant cases. The country has so far witnessed 200 cases of Omicron variant.
The data also showed that the authorities have lodged FIRs against 1,210 offenders in connection with not following COVID norms. The government has realised a revenue of Rs 13,28,45,200 in December so far by imposing fines against violators.
In November, the government had collected Rs 21.23 crore from fines issued against violators of COVID appropriate behaviour.
In October this year, the government had issued 1,27,862 fines and collected revenue of Rs 25.10 crore. The number of fines issued was highest in July this year between May and December.
In July the authorities had issued 2,44,223 fines against violators for not wearing masks and not following social distancing. Omicron cases had started growing in the country with the starting of December.
Delhi reported its first case of Omicron on December 5 when a 37-year-old fully vaccinated man who arrived in the city from Tanzania was tested positive for Omicron.
According to the authorities, Delhi has recorded 102 fresh COVID-19 cases with one fatality on Tuesday.
After a meeting of Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Monday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday made an appeal to the public to not let their guards down and start wearing masks again to arrest the spread of coronavirus.
He also said that there was no need to panic as the Delhi government is fully prepared to deal with the Omicron variant of Covid and he is in constant touch with experts over the issue.
He had said that all the positive cases will now be sent for genome sequencing to ascertain if the new positive cases are Omicron variant or the normal Covid.