Amid fears of renewed Covid-19 surge, thousands of devotees gathered at the Banke Bihari Temple in Vrindavan of Uttar Pradesh to celebrate festival of Holi.
Despite priests requesting the crowd to move away from the temple entrance, devotees, with most of them not wearing masks, continued to throng the temple. People flouting social distancing norms were seen tossing colours in the air.
Constructed in 1864, Bankey Bihari Temple is a famous temple dedicated to Lord Krishna, in the Mathura district. The festival of Holi is connected with Lord Krishna and his consort, Radha. Celebrations at the Banke Bihari Temple begin 40 days before the actual day of the festival of Holi.
The incident happened a few days after Uttar Pradesh government had mandated Covid-19 tests for passengers at railway stations, bus stations and airports besides reactivating Covid helpdesks, running dedicated Covid hospitals in all districts and keeping other hospitals ready for any future needs.
The directive had laid the responsibility of implementing precautionary measures like maintaining social distancing and wearing of masks by the people participating in these programmes on their organisers. The directive also stipulated that organisers will not allow people above 60 or below 10 years of age or those having serious ailments to participate in such events.
A Mathura village woman was on Friday found to have been infected earlier this month with a South African strain of the coronavirus, while two district health workers have contracted the disease despite having been given both shots of the anti-Covid vaccine, according to PTI.
Dr Bhudeo Singh, the in-charge of Mathura's anti-Covid Rapid Response Team, said the woman's test sample was on Friday found to be having South African strain of the Covid-19 virus during its genome sequencing by a government laboratory in Lucknow.
The woman was first tested Covid-positive on March 3 by Deen Dayal Veterinary University which first tested her sample. But following some doubts, it was sent to Lucknow for a re-test, he said.
India's total active caseload has reached 5,21,808 and constitutes 4.33 per cent of the total infections. A net rise of 35,498 cases has been recorded in the total active caseload in a day, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday.