BENGALURU: A day after the country’s first two cases of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 were detected in Bengaluru, the Karnataka government on Friday said students below 18 years of age would be allowed to attend offline classes only if their parents were fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.
A fresh set of guidelines issued on Friday asked all schools and colleges to postpone all in-person cultural events and campus festivals till January 15. Weddings, public gatherings, meetings and conferences should not have more than 500 participants, the guidelines said. Entry to theatres and malls would be allowed only on production of a double-vaccinated certificate.
“People can either show hard copies or soft copies stored on smartphones to get entry into malls,” according to Dr MK Sudarshan, chairman of the Covid-19 technical advisory committee.
It was also decided to increase the daily testing target from 60,000 to 1 lakh, 70% of them RT-PCR tests. Bengaluru Urban’s testing target was revised to 35,000 a day from the current 30,000. Also, authorities will conduct random tests on students, teachers, hotel and mall staff, shopkeepers in markets, office-goers and cinema hall staff every fortnight.
RT-PCR tests would be mandatory for those flying in from “at risk” nations but won’t be required for domestic passengers, said revenue minister R Ashoka.