Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday announced an "unlocking" plan and said that markets and shopping malls in the city will be allowed to open on an odd-even basis from Monday (June 7). The standalone shops will be allowed to open daily from 10 am to 8 pm. Home delivery through e-commerce platforms has also been allowed. Private offices can be opened with 50 per cent manpower with staggered work hours. Moreover, he also allowed Delhi Metro to resume its operations with 50 per cent seating capacity.
According to a Livemint report, only half of Delhi Metro's available trains will be in service at a frequency of five to fifteen minutes when the rapid transport system resumes operation with 50% seating capacity on Monday. The number of trains will be inducted in full strength in a graded manner by Wednesday and thereafter, services will be available as per normal frequency which was available before the lockdown, the report added.
Meanwhile, Dr Naveet Wig, HoD of Medicine and chairperson of AIIMS Covid task force has cautioned against resuming metro services in the national capital. He has suggested resuming the metro services on trial bases first with 33 to 50 per cent capacity.
"We should not start the metro services immediately. For 1-2 weeks we must experiment with 33-50 per cent (occupancy). We should go slow otherwise lid will open up and we'll not be able to suppress it. We can't eradicate this virus," news agency ANI quoted Dr Naveet as saying.
Delhi records 381 COVID-19 cases, 34 deaths on Sunday:
The national capital reported 381 new instances of the COVID-19 infection, the lowest since March 15, with the positivity rate dipping to 0.5 per cent, according health department data on Sunday.
Also, 34 more people have succumbed to the disease in a day, the lowest in around two months. These new fatalities pushed the death toll here to 24,591.
