surat with the new strain of the coronavirus turning out be more infectious the surat municipal corporation smc chief banchhanidhi pani on friday again warned people against venturing out unnecessarily and requested everyone to work from home to stay safei request all citizens to stay safe and avoid venturing out i urge all to try and work from home so that you can keep yourself and your family safe from the infection the new strain is highly infectious and citizens need to extra careful it infects a patients lungs immediately and turns into pneumonia at a faster rate than the earlier strain even if a patient is tested negative in rapid antigen test he or she may be a covid19 positive person pani said in an audio message to the citizenshe appealed to people to go for vaccination as it is safe and will help fight off infection i again urge all residential societies to shut their clubs in the face of increasing infection cases he stressedmeanwhile the civic body has cancelled leaves of all employees so as to meet any eventuality arising out of the spread of the covid19 till april 30 all offices of the civic body will remain open on public holidays till april 30 due to the rising number of covid19 cases smc said in a statement