coronavirus

AMC

Vijay Nehra

stores

Tankers containing milk lined up near Indira Bridge on the outskirts of the city (PIC: ANCELA JAMINDAR)

We have decided to suspend physical stores and asked them to focus on home deliveries. We will review the situation in a couple of days and decide if we need to open the stores. Vijay Nehra, Municipal Commissioner

Ahmedabad

You can no longer visit your neighbourhood supermarket to buy groceries. Wait. Do not panic.Commissioneron Saturday ordered suspension of supermarkets after finding that they had been lax in home delivering groceries. With more and more people crowding physical, increasing chances of contact transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus, the civic chief decided to suspend stores, and instead, directed them to focus on door-step deliveries.After the city went into lockdown early this week to battle the spread of Covid-19, the civic authorities allowed supermarkets to stay open so that people are not deprived of groceries and essential items. The civic body held a meeting with officials of various supermarkets two days ago and asked them to home-deliver goods to prevent crowding at the brick-and-mortar stores.Civic officials said, "There is a lot to touch and grab at a grocery store - shopping carts, freezer door handles, cardboard boxes and plastic packaging. Such surfaces are almost unavoidable for shoppers. But they also carry a certain amount of risk in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic."The bigger concern about such stores is person-to-person transmission. The more the number of people, the more the chance that someone might be carrying the virus. While some stores made people line up at a distance outside, they failed to maintain social distancing inside. Customers were not taking precautions either."AMC officials also received complaints about some supermarkets refusing to home deliver items. When AMC Commissioner Vijay Nehra got to know of this, he sought records of home deliveries made by the supermarkets and found that only a negligible number of deliveries were made.The civic chief said, "We had held a meeting with supermarket officials two days ago. We told them to home deliver goods so that there are fewer people venturing outside to shop. However, we received complaints that the stores were either not answering calls or refusing to carry out doorstep deliveries."My officials and I checked several supermarkets and found this to be true. As keeping the supermarkets open did not serve the intended purpose, we have decided to suspend the physical stores. Instead, they will focus only on home deliveries. We will review the situation in a couple of days and then decide if we need to open the stores."Meanwhile, on Friday, the AMC distributed 47,850 food packets to the homeless and in slums. They also gave 4,400 grocery to slum-dwellers and 2,600 litres of milk to the homeless.Mayor Bijal Patel said, "We have been distributing ration in slums. Today, we distributed about 4,000 ration kits."As many as 1,994 families incompleted their 14-day home quarantine period on Saturday. To show that their quarantine period has come to an end, AMC health teams pasted green stickers outside their houses.As many as 13,742 people in the State have finished their self-quarantine period.Meanwhile, the State government confirmed that 19,340 people are still under quarantine. While 18,497 of them are in home quarantine, 657 have been isolated in government facilities and 186 have been sequestered in private facilities.The government has also filed 236 FIRs against people who violated quarantine rules. The State government has also set up 237 quarantine facilities with 13,093 beds across the State.