Visitors to the Taj Mahal will have to wear masks at all occasions, keep their distance and not contact its glistening marble surfaces when India’s 17th-century monument to appreciate reopens on Monday immediately after a three-thirty day period COVID-19 shutdown.

Only 5,000 vacationers will be allowed in a day, split into two groups, a significantly cry from peak concentrations of 80,000 a day who would swarm the mausoleum crafted in the northern city of Agra by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan for his wife, in a 22-year effort.

“All centrally protected monuments & web sites shall be certain by the protocols like sanitization, social distancing & other well being protocols,” the federal tourism ministry said in a tweet.

Authorities are reopening the Taj and other monuments, this kind of as New Delhi’s historic Red Fort, just as India’s coronavirus infections are climbing at the quickest tempo in 3 months.

On Sunday, the wellbeing ministry documented a history solitary-day spike of 24,850 new circumstances and much more than 600 deaths, pushing the over-all circumstance tally to 673,165, closing in on Russia, the third-most affected region globally.

But the govt has been lifting a huge lockdown of India’s 1.3 billion people today that has still left tens of thousands with no operate and shuttered enterprises.

When international flights continue to be suspended, domestic travel has been opened up, and the governing administration is hoping guests will start to trickle again to some popular places.

Agra, a single of India’s initially massive clusters of the virus, continues to be the worst-afflicted metropolis in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous point out.

“All about the Taj are containment zones,” stated a neighborhood district administration formal, requesting anonymity, forward of the monument’s planned reopening.

Containment zones, regions identified as most affected by the virus, continue being less than rigorous lockdown, with limited accessibility and movement of only important merchandise and expert services.

“We you should not anticipate visitors below for the reason that clusters around the Taj, such as stores and inns are shut,” the formal claimed.