This food delivery company is encouraging kids to order food secretly during the pandemic

While the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission through properly cooked food remains low, it is the exposure to the person handling your deliveries, which can be a little tricky. It should be noted that coronavirus is primarily spread through infected respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or even speaks.

For this reason, precisely, a lot of people are sticking to homecooked food during the pandemic to avoid any kind of exposure to the infectious pathogen. Since, with food deliveries, there is always a risk of contamination after coming in contact with an infected person or surface (like the packaging of the food items), preparing meals at home seems to be the best bet for households with immuno-comprised people or those belonging to high-risk category.

However, an email sent by the restaurant aggregator and food delivery service provider, Zomato is garnering headlines for all the wrong reasons. An email titled "Hey, parents not letting you order?" by Zomato has been doing rounds on the social media platforms which seemingly encourages the kids to order food secretly, during the pandemic.

The email starts with ‘Here’s a cheat sheet to convince your folks to let you order’. Okay, the problem isn’t the subject of the email or even the idea of convincing children to ‘order online’, considering that we are still in the thick of the pandemic, with no vaccine in sight. It is the tip number three of the 'cheat sheet', which innocently talks about ‘Patience is the key.’ How you may ask. Well, as per the food delivery company, you should let your parents fall asleep, then sneak in your order and enjoy it in your room quietly.

These emails may encourage impressionable minds to order food secretly, collect and eat it, before the elderlies in the household get to know. The reason this email is so problematic is that the company makes it look like a fun game of ordering in food while your parents are asleep, completely neglecting the fact that we are still very much battling the pandemic and there is still so much not known about the nature of the virus.

When you ask children and young adults to sneak in and order food secretly, you are exposing them to the risk of contracting the infection (and possibly others in the family) as they hurriedly pick-up their food items from outdoors, leading to negligence of the usual precautionary measures of sanitizing the packaging surfaces.

While restaurants and hotels slowly start the dine-in services once again in the Delhi-NCR after remaining closed for more than 4 months, the situation is still far from normal. Even though restaurants and food delivery merchants are promising to follow the strictest of safety precautions during this time of crisis, it is natural for people to worry. As we continue to adjust to the brave new world of face masks, hand sanitizers and frequent sanitization, the onus lies on each and every one of us to be responsible with our actions and our words.