Bhopal: Night curfew in MP from today onwards, announced CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday evening. The announcement was backed up by the surge in the coronavirus cases fuelled by the fast-spreading Omicron variant. As per the notification, the night curfew would be re-imposed for six hours, starting from 11 pm to 5 am.
“After months, our state has reported 30 new cases within a single day on Thursday. The alarming rise in COVID cases in neighbouring Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi is a cause of particular concern, as in the first wave and the second wave of the pandemic also, the rise in cases in these states was ensued by rising in COVID cases in MP, particularly Indore and Bhopal. If we compare the number of cases reported till now in December this year, the state has already reported a three-fold rise, when compared with the entire November 2021,” Chouhan said in an address to the state on Thursday evening.
As India’s Omicron tally now surpassed 300, officials at the state and centre have expressed concerns on prevention and containment. MP hasn’t reported detection of Omicron cases. However, samples of passengers who resulted positive to tests on airport have been sent for genome sequencing, while the results are still awaited.
As per the state health bulletin, 11 active cases were logged in the past 24 hours, taking the tally to 191. Cumulatively, 7,82,859 individuals have recuperated since the pandemic. Fortunately, the state hasn’t recorded any deaths in recent days.