Bihar will not witness New Year celebrations in the open this time after the state government banned it at public places like parks, gardens and zoos.

The move came after a spurt in the Covid-19 cases and the imminent threat of the spread of omicron variant made chief minister Nitish Kumar assert that the third wave of the pandemic has already started in the state.

“All parks and gardens, including the biological garden, will remain completely closed from December 31 this year to January 2 next year. This shall be strictly enforced…” an order issued by Bihar chief secretary Tripurari Sharan late on Tuesday evening said.

The order pointed out that the decision was taken in the light of “the spread of new ‘variant of concern’ omicron of Covid-19 and the possibility of the gathering of crowds at public places on the occasion of upcoming New Year Eve and New Year.”

The organisers or managers of all kinds of social, political, entertainment, sports, educational, cultural and religious programmes have been made responsible for ensuring that the people present at them wear masks, follow social distancing and Covid-19 appropriate behaviour.

Earlier while inaugurating the 96th national conference of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in Patna, Nitish said: “The third wave of Covid-19 pandemic has started in the state. We are making all necessary arrangements to save the people from it.”

Meanwhile, the Patna airport is earning accolades for manually checking Covid-19 vaccination certificates of the incoming passengers and giving vaccine shots to the people whose second dose is due or who are unvaccinated.

“Of the four airports I visited recently (Calcutta, Bagdogra, Lucknow and Patna), manual checking of vaccination certificates of inbound travellers took place only at Patna. Not just that, partially vaccinated travellers were immediately led to a kiosk inside the airport where they were given the second dose of vaccine before they could move out into the city. Now that’s called administration,” a Calcutta-based visitor Arnab Banerjee shared on social media. He had visited the city last week.

Two Covid-19 tests-cum-vaccination kiosks are being run on the directions of Patna district administration by civil society organisation Care India at the airport — one inside the terminal, another outside it for the incoming passengers.

“When partially vaccinated or unvaccinated passengers alight at the airport, we counsel them to take the shot. Many of them oblige, but some say that they are travelling, hence they will take it later or after reaching home. We conduct rapid antigen tests for the partially vaccinated and collect samples for RTPCR tests of unvaccinated people if they refuse to take the vaccine doses,” Binay Kumar Singh, Care India coordinator told The Telegraph.

Singh added that RTPCR tests were also being conducted on international passengers carrying RTPCR reports that are more than 72 hours old, and also on passengers coming from omicron-infested areas. Random tests of inbound passengers are also conducted.

“We are also taking self-declaration from international passengers that they will stay in home quarantine,” Singh said.

Bihar has not witnessed any infection caused by omicron so far.

The state saw 47 new Covid-19 cases on Tuesday taking the overall active cases to 155. As per the government figures, there have been 7.27 lakh infections of the deadly virus, including 12,096 deaths.

However, various other non-official surveys and deductions put the number of Covid-19 deaths in the range of 2 lakh to 2.5 lakh in the state.