Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (SP)

Bengaluru, Mar 31: The second wave of coronavirus infection has been taking its toll everywhere. Chief minister B S Yediyurappa, held a meeting of the technical advisory committee about the disease and discussed ways and means to contain the advances of the pandemic. Even though the positive cases are on the rise, and the state is on the brink of recording 3,000 cases, the government has not been keen on limiting the number of audiences in cinema theatres. This is giving rise to speculations and doubts.

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The experts on the advisory committee have been telling the chief minister since the last three months that there is a need to restrict the number of audiences to 50 percent of the seating capacity. Because, details of persons visiting the theatres are not available. For example, if a person who sits in the theatre for three hours gets infected after a couple of days, people seated next to him are not treated as primary contacts. People are also not serious about using masks.

Once the lights of the theatres are off, most people remove their masks, it is said. There is no mechanism to see that they continue to wear masks all through. Experts say that theatres are as risky as markets where hundreds of people move around in crowds without undertaking precautions. It is true that film chamber and senior artistes have urged the government not to meddle with theatres as the filmdom which badly suffered due to corona is still recovering from it.