The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday decided to make 14 days' home quarantine mandatory for all domestic passengers landing in the city. The civic body has also made it clear that the essential workers will have to seek permission to resume their duties two days prior to their landing in the city.

An order issued by Additional Municipal Commissioner P. Velrasu in this regard stated: “It is clarified that any exemption request for any government servant for contributing to an office has to be made in writing to [email protected] at least two working days before landing stating full details of the work and elaborating the importance of the work and also justifying their request for home quarantine exemption.”

The BMC has maintained that all persons without the written permission by the BMC shall be stamped without exemption and shall compulsorily home quarantine themselves for 14 days. “The BMC staff deployed at airport shall not grant any exemption at their level,” the order stated.

The order has come after a big controversy over the BMC’s action to send an IPS officer Vinay Tewari into quarantine after he landed in Mumbai from Patna to investigate the actor Sushant Singh Rajput death case. The BMC on Friday allowed Tewari to fly back to home after the Patna City Superintendent of Police applied for an exemption from home quarantine.

Maharashtra registered a spike of 10,483 new cases on Friday, which took its coronavirus tally to 4,90,262, the state health department said. The death toll in the state due to the pandemic reached 17,092 with 300 patients succumbing during the day, it said. The statement said that the recovery rate in the state is 66.76 per cent, while the fatality rate is 3.49 per cent. Mumbai reported 862 new cases and 45 deaths on Friday.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray instructed district collectors on Friday to focus on tracing contacts of Covid-19 patients, monitor containment zones and treat patients on time without any negligence to prevent a second wave of the pandemic in the state. Thackeray issued the directives at meeting with all the district collectors, municipal commissioners and divisional commissioners through video-conferencing. Luv Agarwal, Joint Secretary from Union Health Ministry, also attended the meeting through video-conference. “To prevent a second wave of the Covid-19, the focus should be on the contact-tracing of Covid-19 patients, monitoring containment zones and treating patients on time. The spread of the coronavirus disease should be prevented. There should not be any negligence in it,” the CM said. Thackeray further said the jumbo facilities, on the lines of Mumbai, are being set up on priority in major cities of the state. “The mortality rate needs to be reduced. Also, it is a serious issue that there have been several complaints of overcharging by hospitals. The administration should deal with such cases strictly,” he said.