Patna: Patna District Magistrate Sri Kumar Ravi has issued orders for a week-long complete lockdown in the capital city of Bihar. This lockdown will come into effect on July 10 and will be enforced till July 16. The decision has been made after Patna reported a massive spike of 234 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday. The order was issued by the Bihar government`s Health Department in exercise of the powers conferred under section 2, 3, and 4 of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1987. "And whereas, there is an alarming surge in Covid-19 positive cases in district of Patna in the last three weeks wherein positivity rate has also been considerably high," the order said.

It goes further to add offices of the Government of India, its autonomous/subordinate offices and public corporation shall remain closed with the exception of defence, central armed police forces, treasury, public utilities (petrol, CNG, LPG, PNG), disaster management, power generation and transmission units, post offices, national informatics centre, and early warning agencies.  Offices of the state/union territory governments, their autonomous bodies, corporations, etc shall remain closed as per the order with the exception of police, home guards, civil defence, fire and emergency services, disaster management elections, prisons, district administration and treasury along with electricity, water, sanitation, and municipal bodies.

In addition, all hospitals and related medical establishments, including their manufacturing and distribution units (both public and private) will remain open. While commercial and private establishments will be closed, relaxation has been provided for ration shops, dairy and milk booths, grocery shops, banks, insurance offices, print/electronic media, telecommunications, petrol pumps, power generation units, capital, and debt market services, cold storage and warehouse services, private security services, industrial establishments, and hospitality services along with the delivery of goods through e-commerce.

As per the Bihar government`s Health Department, the state detected 749 new Covid-19 cases on July 8. Patna accounted for 234 of these cases. The state`s tally of confirmed cases of infection now stands at 13,274. While 9338 patients have recovered, over 104 have succumbed to the infection to date.

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