With daily COVID-19 cases grazing the 2,000-mark over the past few days and the fear of a third wave, the Tamil Nadu government has announced a new set of restrictions. All places of worship will be shut on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, in order to prevent crowding. Earlier, the Government had also permitted the District Administration or Civic Body or Police to close all marketplaces that witness huge crowds. 

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Claiming that the health experts had advised so, the government says it plans to resume physical classes for students of classes 9 to 12, from September 1. The government intends to do so with 50% occupancy in classrooms and in adherence to COVID-19 norms and they add that it would be decided based on the opinions of all concerned stakeholders. The government also emphasized that online learning has caused a huge disparity as many students couldn’t attend online classes. It must however be noted that those below the age of 18 (school students) are not eligible for vaccination and suitable vaccines aren’t made available for them. 

Regarding medical and nursing colleges, the government said that they would be permitted to re-open from August 16, adding that the students and faculty had been vaccinated under the frontline workers quota. Owing to the third wave fears and rising cases in Kerala, from August 5th Tamil Nadu has made a two-shot vaccination certificate or RT-PCR mandatory for those entering from Kerala.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu recorded 1,997 positive cases of Covid-19 on Thursday as per the state health bulletin, bringing the total tally to 25,69,398. The state recorded 33 deaths mounting the state death toll at 34,230. A total of 1,943 patients were discharged following treatment, taking the total number of recoveries to 25,15,030.