After withdrawing the night curfew and stringent lockdown measures on Sundays, which were imposed in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases in the state, the Kerala government on Tuesday decided to restore Saturdays as working days, wherever applicable. "All employees are instructed to report for duty (on Saturdays) accordingly," an order issued by the Disaster Management Department said.

It said that on August 4, all government offices, quasi government, public sector undertakings, companies, autonomous bodies and commissions were allowed to work from Monday to Friday with full attendance.

"After assessing the present COVID-19 scenario and the restrictions imposed in the State to contain the same, the government is pleased to restore Saturdays also as working days, wherever applicable," it added.

In view of the relaxation in COVID-19 restrictions, the state government also decided to reinstate the biometric entry system from September 16 for government, semi-government and public sector undertaking employees.

It said that the employees can use their identity cards to access the biometric entry system. The biometric entry system was stopped since March last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Monday, Kerala had reported 15,058 fresh COVID-19 cases and 99 deaths which pushed the total infections to 43,90,489 and the death toll to 22,650. The Test Positivity Rate (TPR) was recorded at 16.39 per cent.

Besides that, since Sunday, 28,439 people had recovered from the infection taking the total recoveries to 41,58,504 and the number of active cases to 2,08,773.