Old churches in the city, including the Syrian Church on Brooke Bond Road, St Michael’s Church at Town Hall and Holy Trinity Church at Ramanathapuram (in pic) were decked up in fairy lights on Friday
COIMBATORE: Christmas was celebrated in a subdued manner in the city on Friday, with churches reducing duration of mass and placing some restrictions on children under 10 and people over 60.
Family get-togethers got smaller because of old people at home and relatives not being able to fly in from abroad. However, video calls got longer and larger with more participants. Décor was minimalistic in most houses and the focus was more on a large lunch.
The official said bull bars causes serious danger to pedestrians, sometimes fatally, and damage other vehicles
COIMBATORE: The transport department has intensified its drive against vehilces fitted bull bars following a direction from the state government. In the past one week, more than 300 drivers were fined for using bull bars in their cars.
“Fitting bull bars on cars is a violation of the Motor Vehicles Act. A couple of weeks ago, the state government has directed the transport department to conduct intensified drives to curtail its usage,” a regional transport officer (RTO) said.
Based on the directions, RTOs along with motor vehicle inspectors are conducting regular inspections on the roads apart from checking the vehicles that visit their offices for obtaining fitness certificates. “We are not giving fitness certificates to those vehicles that are found with bull bars and fine them upto Rs 1,000. We have been removing bull bars with the help of mechanics,” he adde
As on Friday, 59 people who have returned to the district from the UK since November 25 have tested negative and results of the remaining 37 are awaited
COIMBATORE: The district recorded less than 100 Covid-19 cases for the second consecutive day on Friday, when it saw just 95 fresh cases, taking the tally to 51,791. With 128 people getting discharged on the same day, the number of active cases fell to 914. The district also recorded one more death taking the toll to 643. So far, 50,234 people have recovered from the infection in the district.
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research is planning its third sero surveillance in Coimbatore, Thiruvannamalai and Chennai, a health department official said. ICMR has written to the public health authorities requesting for vehicles for their team to visit and travel for two days in next week to collect sero samples in the district. However, the team has decided to identify locations to collect the sero samples themselves.