Kerala shuts schools till Class 9 after COVID cases rise in state. No night curfew, Sunday lockdown for now

With COVID cases surging in the state, the Kerala government has decided to shift classes up until IX to online mode of education. A decision to this effect was taken in a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The meeting also decided against imposition of night curfew or a Sunday lockdown.

The state capital district and Ernakulam district has been recording the highest daily cases in the past one week and on Thursday, January 13, alone the test positivity rate jumped to 20 per cent and there were over 13,000 cases.

Authorities have been asked to identify if there are clusters or developing clusters of a high number of cases. Pregnant women working in the government have been allowed to work from home and all government offices have been asked to have only online programmes.

It has also been decided to restrict the number of people at weddings and funerals to 50 wherever the TPR is 20 per cent and in places where it is above 30 per cent, there should be no public functions. Shops and establishments should ensure that they promote online bookings and sales and in malls there should be only one person in every 25 sq ft space, the meeting decided.

It was also advised to see that authorities should reach the educational institutions to give the first dose vaccine to students and complete it at the earliest. Even when fresh guidelines have been announced, there is no word on curtailing or postponing the ongoing district party meetings of the ruling CPI-M which is currently on and Vijayan himself was addressing the Thiruvananthapuram district CPI-M's party inauguration on Friday at the capital city outskirts at Parassala.

Now with him leaving for the US on Saturday, January 15for his medical treatment and will not be returning till January 29 of this month, it's very unlikely if there will be more lockdown norms imposed till then.