Bokaro: Restaurants and hotels, which were on the verge of recovering the losses incurred last year due to the Covid-induced lockdown, are staring at another lean period in the wake of bird flu scare. Many of them are recording a dip in sales as customers are giving chicken dishes a miss.
Amit Johar, who owns West Inn hotel here, said the sale of chicken items has dropped by 25% in the past few days. “The drop in sales has forced us to innovate and add more vegetarian items to our menu,” he added.
Vikram Shanan, owner of the popular Zaika resort and a host of other restaurants here, said, “Due to bird flu scare, the demand for chicken items has dropped by 50% and customers are opting for vegetarian food and even demanding fish. However, the demand for mutton has not gone up.”
Aditi Tandon
Tripta Vasudev is not particularly vaccine sceptic, but she would rather wait for the first wave of Covid-19 vaccinations to be over before volunteering for a shot. “How do we know
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Aditi Tandon
Tripta Vasudev is not particularly vaccine sceptic, but she would rather wait for the first wave of Covid-19 vaccinations to be over before volunteering for a shot. “How do we know the vaccines are safe? All our lives we have been told it takes years to develop safe vaccines. Now two have been approved in less than a year of the Covid-19 outbreak. I have my worries,” says the 62-year-old, who falls in the priority group that the Centre has listed for initial rounds of the Covid-19 inoculation to be rolled out beginning January 16.
Unaddressed issues
The first set of dry runs was, by and large, smooth. It presented minor issues such as space constraints, network connectivity and technical challenges with the Co-WIN portal. These will be fixed. There are other issues product-related concerns like vaccine research results, efficacy; prioritisation issues such as why immune-compromised children should not be a priority; and the most critical issue of potentia