Employees of all private offices in Delhi will work from home as the city’s disaster management authority announced new curbs on Tuesday to rein in the rising coronavirus cases. However, firms that fall under the “exempted category” can continue to operate.

Earlier, private offices were allowed to operate at 50% capacity.

Meanwhile Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the Centre’s representatives have assured the Delhi government of enforcing coronavirus curbs across the National Capital Region, reported PTI.

He added that it was difficult to predict when the third coronavirus wave of infections will peak. While the number of daily cases has been in the range of 20,000 to 22,000 for three days with a positivity rate of 24% to 25%, the cases could still increase, the chief minister said.

On Monday, Delhi reported 19,166 new cases of coronavirus while 17 people died due to the disease. The number of cases was 15.75% fewer than Sunday’s tally of 22,751 infections. But, the positivity rate shot up from 23.53% on Sunday to 25% on Monday, highest since May 4. This was because the number of tests conducted in Delhi on Monday was 20,000 fewer than Sunday.

On Monday, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority decided to shut down restaurants and bars in the city. Only take away facility will be allowed at these outlets. The authorities also decided that only one weekly market will be allowed to operate every day in each zone of the city.

The health department has been advised to make arrangements for additional manpower at hospitals and to scale up the vaccination, including for those in age group of 15 to 18 years.

Almost all states are reporting an uptick in coronavirus cases for last two weeks, fueled by the Omicron variant of the virus. India on Tuesday registered 1,68,063 new Covid-19 cases, taking the overall tally to 3,58,75,790 since the pandemic began in the country in January 2020. The number of new cases was 6.93% fewer than Monday’s count of 1,79,723 cases.

The active cases increased to 8,21,446 – the highest in 208 days. The daily positivity rate stood at 10.65%.