A huge line of men huddled into a long queue across a ground in Kerala’s Kottayam district, the queue is so large that it forms a semicircle, with no social distancing being practised. These were visuals from a meat shop in Kerala’s Kottayam where several buyers ignored safe practices for COVID-19 and crowded to buy meat on the eve of Easter Sunday.
Across Kerala, meat shops saw unusual crowds due to Easter, with crowd control reportedly becoming difficult as a result.
In Ernakulam’s Chambakkara fish market, meat shops witnessed crowds on Saturday. While police officers attempted to impose crowd control in these places, in many areas, ensuring crowd control and social distancing became next to impossible.
Some reports stated that the buyers avoided fish, due to reports of large quantities of old and stale seafood being confiscated and disposed of by the food safety authorities.
However, Ernakulam’s Paravoor and Thevara seafood markets saw large crowds of people who purchased seafood.
In Kerala’s Idukki district, a complete seven-day lockdown was imposed in Munnar after crowd control became impossible in its marketplaces.
Barring petrol pumps, ATMs and pharmacies, all commercial shops including grocery stores have been shut for 7 days on Thursday.
“The main reason to impose the lockdown is crowd control, as we see many people flocking to markets in the town from nearby tea estates. However this has also been done as a precautionary measure as the neighbouring district of Theni in Tamil Nadu have reported many positive cases,” Devikulam Sub-Collector Prem Krishnan had told TNM.
While the residents of Munnar town were given time in advance to stock up essential items of 7 days, for those living in the tea estates and colonies of Munnar, the district administration stocked up the estate bazaars with essential items and good, ensuring that estate residents don’t have to travel to the town in order to shop.
Small shops near colonies have also been allowed to remain open in case neighbouring residents wanted to purchase essential items.