With Covid-19 cases rising for the past few weeks at an unprecedented rate, the pandemic continues to pose hardship for the entire country. Today, many states in Northern India are experiencing probably the 2nd or even the 3rd wave of rise in infections and mortality. With the onset of winter, the problem is getting accentuated, especially for the vulnerable ones.
While Pandemic fatigue is an expected and natural response to a prolonged public health crisis, we need to understand and keep in mind the repercussions of dropping our guard not only on the health and safety of those around us but also its impact on our work and everyday lives.
Mr Nikhil Sawhney, Chairman, CII Northern Region, said, “As we can see some signs of a rebound in our economy, the least we would want now would be another spate of shutdowns or closing of our workplaces due to infections. Already, we are seeing that some of the states are again being forced to announce night curfews and restrictions on social gatherings which I would say are not good signs.”
He has written to the industry in North India and urged them to NOT lower guard against Covid-19 and to ensure that the prescribed norms of wearing masks, maintaining physical distance of at least 6 feet, washing our hands at regular intervals, avoiding large gatherings, maintaining health & hygiene and boosting our immunity are followed.
He said, “We must also ensure that those around us, including family, friends and workforce also follow these rules at all times without fail. At the same time, in our Offices, we need to maintain Work from Home policy for few more months.”
He said that the Government is committed to ensuring the availability of the vaccine and has stated that a definite process is underway for reaching it to the vulnerable sections of society.
In the light of this, it is essential for all industry members to be ready for a period of at least a year of continued vigil and precautionary measures for working towards containing disease prevalence.
CII has prepared a detailed workplace protocol, which has been shared with the industry members to adhere to, including following Work from Home for all offices requiring non-contact activities; ensuring the fullest workplace safety measures where employees are required to be physically present; conducting COVID testing of all employees and their families; aggressively promoting awareness among employees’ families and the larger community; and Relentlessly spreading the message of SMS I.e. Sanitization and hand washing, Mask wearing, Social distancing.
He said that as industry members, it is incumbent on us to remain constantly vigilant, proactively reduce risk and work towards minimizing the impact of the pandemic in India.
