Over 50% of the Supreme Court’s employees have tested positive for Covid-19, reported The Times of India on Monday. Proceedings will now be held via video conferencing.

The court, which conducted virtual hearings for most of the last year due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown, restarted physical proceedings only recently, in March.

After several cases were reported among the Supreme Court staff, the entire court complex was being sanitised and the judges are expected to begin proceedings an hour later than the scheduled time, reported NDTV. Till Saturday, at least 44 staff members had tested positive for Covid-19, according to India Today.

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“Take notice that on 12.04.2021 all the benches which are scheduled to sit at 10.30 am will sit at 11.30 am and those scheduled to sit at 11.00 am will sit at 12.00 noon,” a notice read.

India is currently in the midst of a severe second wave of the pandemic. On Monday, India reported 1,68,912 new cases of the coronavirus, taking the country’s overall tally of infections since the pandemic broke out last March to 1,35,27,717. This is another record daily rise in the number of cases in India since the beginning of the pandemic. India is now second only to the United States in the number of coronavirus cases since the pandemic began.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court e-committee, led by Justice DY Chandrachud, has been looking at purchasing 1,600 video links for hearings through video-conferencing, according to The Times of India. On Friday, Chandrachud said that video-conferencing was initiated as a platform to ensure that those whose rights were being violated could still avail the legal recourse, reported Live Law.

Former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has also called for making online proceedings a permanent aspect of the judicial system, reported PTI. Gandhi said that the achievements of the Supreme Court’s e-committee had been “inadequate”.