The Jharkhand government has extend ed the ongoing lockdown by another week till May 6 along with more restrictions on the movement of people and operation of markets.

Chief minister Hemant Soren, who made the announcement on Wednesday while inaugurating a 40- bed Covid hospital on Ratu Road, said, “Considering the Covid-19 situation, we have decided to extend the 'health safety week' by another week. So, the lockdown will now continue till May 6. A detailed order about the dos and donts will follow later in the day. But broadly it has been decided to cut down timings of markets.”

Until now shops and other trade establishments that did not come under the purview of the lockdown were allowed to function till 8pm, except medical services and pharmacies. A few key sectors like agriculture, mining, construction etc were also allowed to function during Phase 1 of the health safety week. All religious places were allowed to stay open but entry of devotees was banned.

The new Covid care hospital in Ranchi. Manob Chowdhary

“Now, everything except some basic essential services will be functional only till 2pm. We will provide a one-hour window till 3pm for movement of people to their homes,” he explained.

Movement of people associated with essential services—mainly healtcare and medical — will be allowed provided people carry legitimate prescriptions or other documents, sources said. They clarified that all kinds of shops, selling grocery, vegetables and liquor, will also be closed after 2pm.

Hemant convened a meeting of the state disaster management authority around noon on Wednesday after which it was decided to extend the ongoing health safety week scheduled to end on Thursday.

Notably, all major parties and the Federation of Chamber of Commerce and Industries were in favour of extending the lockdown in the wake of spiralling Covid-19 cases and fatalities.

On Tuesday, the Congress, a member of the ruling alliance government, had formally demanded the extension of the lockdown while the JMM, the leader of the coalition, and the Opposition BJP both supported a more stringent lockdown to tackle the crisis.

The active Covid-19 caseload breached the 50,000-mark for the first time in Jharkhand on Tuesday, while the state reported at least 131 recoveries – the highest reported in a day since the pandemic hit Jharkhand in March last year.

As per a bulletin released by the National Health Mission (NHM), as many as 6020 fresh cases against 4247 recoveries took the active caseload in Jharkhand to 51,252 on Tuesday. The Covid toll also jumped to 2246 on the day, the bulletin revealed.

Ranchi continued to report the highest number of fresh cases and casualties on Tuesday. As per the NHM bulletin, the district reported 61 of the 131 casualties and 1574 of the 6000-odd cases on the day, which took the toll here to 702 and the active caseload up at 17,060.