Central govt employees; The Centre on Wednesday announced that its employees will be able to get 15 days of special casual leave (SCL) in case their parents or any other family member dependent on them test positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), according to an order issued by the personnel ministry.

“In case of active hospitalisation of any of the family members/parents even after 15 days of the expiry of SCL, the government servants may be granted leave of any kind due and admissible beyond 15 days of SCL till their discharge from hospital,” it said. The Ministry has issued a detailed order on treatment, regularisation of hospitalisation or quarantine for the staff.

The ministry has come out with the detailed order on treatment, regularisation of hospitalization or quarantine period during COVID-19 pandemic after it received several queries related to it and keeping in view the “hardships faced by the government servants”.

A government servant shall be granted commuted leave up to 20 days when he or she is COVID-19 positive and is in home isolation/quarantine, the order said.

In case of a government servant testing COVID-19 positive and is in home isolation and has also been hospitalised, he or she shall be granted commuted leave/SCL/earned leave (EL) for a period up to 20 days starting from the time having tested positive, it said.

If an employee comes in direct contact with a COVID-positive person and remains in-home quarantine, “he shall be treated as on-duty/work from home for seven days”, the order said. If an employee wants to spend time in quarantine as a precautionary measure in a containment zone, he “shall be treated as on-duty/work from home till the containment zone is denotified”.

Mean-while,  India’s daily Covid-19 cases remained below the 100,000 again today, however, the daily death record saw a massive spike. The country reported 94,052 new infections today and 6,148 new deaths, taking the total number of confirmed infections in India to 29,183,121 and deaths to 359,676, according to MoHFW. The number of Covid-19 deaths in Bihar was on Wednesday revised drastically upwards by the state health department which put the total number of fatalities caused by the pandemic at 9,429. According to the department, which had till the previous day stated the number of deaths to be under 5,500, as many as 3,951 deaths have been added to the number of deaths after verification.

With 17,321 cases reported in the past 24 hours, Tamil Nadu is leading the state list. It is followed by Kerala with 15,204 new infections. Maharashtra reported 10,989 cases. Karnataka 10,959, and Andhra Pradesh 8,766 cases. Delhi reported 337 fresh cases and West Bengal 5,384.