DW BUREAU / Chandigarh Travellers coming to Punjab for less than 72 hours will be exempt from the mandatory 14-day home quarantine requirement, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said on Tuesday. Singh said it has been decided to provide this concession to facilitate students wishing to come for examinations or business travellers etc, whose stay in the state is less than 72 hours from the time of their arrival. It has been decided to exempt such travellers from the 14-day mandatory home quarantine requirement that remains in place for domestic inbound travellers in Punjab, Singh said in a statement here. The exempt travellers will, however, need to submit a formal undertaking at the border check post in a standard format provided on COVA app, which they would have to download on their phones. Besides entering their details in the app's travellers' information section, these persons would have to undertake that the COVA app will remain active throughout their period of stay in Punjab. The additional standard operating procedures for such travellers requires them to voluntarily submit that they are not coming from any containment zone  and undertake not to stay for more than 72 hours in Punjab from the time of arrival in the state, said the statement. During this period, they shall commit to monitoring their health and maintaining distance from those around, and also interact with the assigned surveillance team in case they suffer from any symptoms consistent with COVID-19 and will immediately call at 104. All due precautions would have to be strictly adhered to and non-adherence to wearing of mask/social distancing would make them liable to be acted upon under section 188 of the IPC as per provision of the Epidemic Diseases Act 1897, said the CM. Further, if within a week of return any such person is tested positive then he/she will have to immediately contact the government of Punjab at 104 and assist them in contact tracing, said the statement. While the central government had recently waived the requirement of home quarantine for domestic travellers and replaced the same with self-monitoring, the CM had made it clear that quarantine restrictions would continue to remain in place in Punjab on account of rising numbers. "Today's announcement is the only exception to the rule," the statement added. So far, 365 people have died of COVID-19 in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh each, 308 in Haryana, 204 in Punjab, 187 in Jammu and Kashmir, 160 in Bihar, 70 in Odisha, 49 in Uttarakhand, 36 in Assam, and 33 in Kerala and Jharkhand each.Chhattisgarh has registered 19 deaths, Puducherry 18, Goa 17, Himachal Pradesh 11, Chandigarh eight, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Tripura two and Ladakh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu together have reported one fatality each. The Health Ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities. Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases at 2,60,924 followed by Tamil Nadu at 1,42,798, Delhi at 1,13,740, Gujarat at 42,722, Karnataka at 41,581, Uttar Pradesh at 38,130 and Telangana at 36,221. The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 31,448 in West Bengal, 31,103 in Andhra Pradesh, 24,936 in Rajasthan, 21,894 in Haryana and 18,207 in Madhya Pradesh.Bihar has instances of 17,959 infections, Assam 16,806, Odisha 13,737, and Jammu and Kashmir 10,827 cases. Punjab has reported 8,178 novel coronavirus infections so far, while Kerala has 8,322 cases. With 28,498 fresh cases recorded in a day, India's COVID-19 tally sprinted past nine lakh on Tuesday, just three days after it crossed the eight-lakh mark, according to the Union health ministry data. The total coronavirus caseload in the country surged to 9,06,752 and the death toll mounted to 23,727 with 553 people succumbing to the disease in 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am on Tuesday showed. (editor@dailyworld.in)