COVID-19: Restaurant association issues advisory, asks members to shut operations till March 31

In a bid to check the spread of coronavirus, the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) has issued an advisory to all its members to shut down operations from March 18 to March 31.

"In view of the serious health risk to lakhs of employees and millions of patrons in the Food Service Sector amidst ever-worsening situation around COVID-19 in India, NRAI, as a responsible industry body, has sent out an advisory to all its Members to shut down their Restaurant's operations from March 18 till 31st March 2020 or till such time when there are no new cases reported for a few days," said an official statement by the NRAI.

"We can't forget that most of our employees use public transport to commute and they run a huge risk of getting infected and further becoming carriers of the deadly Virus. Hence, in order to avoid any such risk; we advise all our members to shut down their operations and help curtail the spread of the deadly virus," it further read.

Emphasising that the decision is a tough one but it is being taken in the larger benefit for their teams, their guests and the community, it further said, "It is well known that the Food Service Industry works on a fairly high proportion of fixed operating costs and therefore, this decision to shut down is extremely hard on us. We intend to work with all stakeholders in the ecosystem to seek their support in mitigating our losses as far as possible."

A total of 147 positive cases of coronavirus have been reported in India so far, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Wednesday.

Globally, the virus has infected nearly 185,000 people and killed more than 7500, as per the latest data available on the World Health Organisation website.