A Supreme Court employee tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday even as the apex court has been holding hearings through video-conferencing to toe the social distancing line.
According to a Times of India report, the employee had come to work at the apex court on April 16 and tested positive for the disease later. Two other employees, who had come in contact with the patient, have been placed under home quarantine.
The process is on to trace those who may have come in contact with the SC employee.
As COVID-19 infections had spread across the country, the Supreme Court shut its doors to litigants and lawyers on March 23, even before the lockdown was imposed, but opened up to a virtual new way of functioning, albeit with reduced strength. Judges have been hearing matters through video-conferencing from their residences ever since.
Though the first phase of the nationwide lockdown for containing the spread of coronavirus started on March 25, the apex court had issued a circular on March 23 restricting entry of advocates and litigants in its premises.
According to a recent PTI report, the Supreme Court heard 593 matters via video-conferencing and delivered judgement in 215 of them in a month during the unprecedented nationwide lockdown.
(With PTI inputs)
