Labour-intensive textile, apparel, diamond and engineering units in states including Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have issued advisories asking workers to abide by Covid protocols so as to prevent a resurgence of the pandemic.

The development comes in the wake of reports of mounting cases of the infection in China. Surat is looking at how to provide booster doses to the workersof the textile and diamond trades. The diamond and textile units in Surat together employ about 2.8 million people. Tirupur has 1.2 million workers and has sought to allay fears about a fresh wave of the pandemic among migrant workers so that they do not leave their workplaces.

The latest Covid outbreak sweeping China has begun impacting the global textile and apparel supply chain. This has raised uncertainty over production delays and factory closures.The Omicron variant of the Covid virus is making its way across several big cities in China after the country made a U-turn on its former zero-Covid policy of containment earlier this month.The spread of infections, which has hit China’s capital city Beijing the most, is threatening widespread business disruption to the world’s second-largest economy and largest apparel exporter. More than half the population has been infected.