Pizza Scare Jolts Food Biz In Delhi

Many plan to stop ordering-in as delivery boy tests Coronavirus positive, sending 72 families & his 17 co-workers in quarantine

- Chayyanika Nigam, Aishwarya Paliwal and Ajay Kumar

Lakhs of people across Delhi-NCR, who have been used to ordering in food, particularly in lockdown days, woke up on Thursday morning to a barrage of WhatsApp messages, advising them to discontinue the practice.

This was the trigger: a pizza delivery boy had tested positive for the Coronavirus. His 17 coworkers are being kept in a government quarantine facility for COVID-19 tests.

Authorities have identified 72 families, in Malviya Nagar and Hauz Khas neighbourhoods of South Delhi, where the delivery boy had visited with food in the past, and put them in home quarantine.

Nupur Mehra, a data analyst who has been working from home, along with her husband, a senior engineer with a Gurgaon-based company, had no choice but to order in food after their cook stopped showing up. Like many others Mehra is a worried woman now.

“We have two children. Cooking different dishes and junk food is impossible for us, so my husband used to place orders. But after hearing about the infected delivery boy, we won’t order any food,” she said.

Home delivery of essential items like food in lockdown days has been a compulsion for everyone, the young and the old. “We will be more cautious from now onwards and will not open the gate for any delivery boy. We will ask them to keep the items outside the gate and, using gloves, we will bring them inside,” said Harpal Kaur (74), a retired school principal of who lives with his wife in Defence Colony.

SCREEN SHOT!

The pizza delivery boy is a resident of Savitri Nagar area in Malviya Nagar. Officials said he showed symptoms of Coronavirus for days until April 14 when he tested positive throwing district health and administration authorities into a tizzy.