(TibetanReview.net, Jul01’20) – India announced Jun 30 further opening of activities while making it clear that the Covid-19 lockdown will continue in the containment zones till Jul 31. Issuing guidelines for the month-long ‘Unlock 2’ – the “phased re-opening” of activities that had been barred to contain the coronavirus spread in the country – the government said educational institutions, Metro Rail services, cinema halls and gyms will continue to remain closed.
International air travel of passengers in a limited manner under the existing Vande Bharat mission is allowed. Further opening up will take place in a calibrated manner.
Domestic flights and passenger trains, already been allowed in a limited manner, will be further expanded in a calibrated manner.
The most noteworthy feature of Unlock-2 is that there will be no restriction on inter-state and intra-state movement of persons and goods including those for cross land-border trade under treatiest with neighbouring states. No separate permission will be required for such movements.
Night curfew will be enforced from 10PM to 5AM in a further relaxation.
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The announcement of unlock 2 came as India’s Health Ministry reported 1,8653 new Covid-19 cases a record 507 deaths over the past 24 hours as of Jul 1 at 8AM, taking their totals to 585,493 cases and 17,400 deaths.
A total of 347,979, or 59.43 per cent, had recovered, so that the number of active cases was 220,115.
India currently has the fourth highest number of Covid-19 cases after the US, Brazil and Russia. It also has the eighth highest number of deaths from the global pandemic.
The 13 worst-hit states with more than 10,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a total of 174,761 cases after 4,878 fresh cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 90,167 (↑3,943) cases, Delhi with 87,360 (↑2,190) cases, Gujarat with 32,557 (↑619) cases, Uttar Pradesh 23,492 (↑664), West Bengal 18,559 (↑652), Rajasthan 18,014 (↑354), Telangana 16,339 (↑945), Karnataka 15,242 (↑947), Andhra Pradesh 14,595 (↑704), Haryana 14,548 (↑338) cases, Madhya Pradesh 13,593 (↑223), and Bihar 10,043 (↑403).
Below them were 11 states/Union Territories with more than 1,000 cases, namely Assam 8,227 (↑475), Jammu & Kashmir 7,497 (↑260), Odisha 7,065 (↑20), Punjab 5,568 (↑150), Kerala 4,442 (↑253), Uttarakhand 2,881 (↑50), Chattisgarh 2,860 (↑99), Jharkhand 2,490 (↑64), Tripura 1,388 (↑8), Goa 1,315 (↑117), and Manipur 1,234 (↑7).
Besides, there were seven other states/ Union Territories with more than 100 cases, namely Ladakh 973 (↑9), Himachal Pradesh 953 (↑11), Puducherry 714 (↑95), Nagaland 459 (↑25), Chandigarh 440 (↑5), Arunachal Pradesh 191 (↑4), and Mizoram 160 (↑12).
Three states/Union Territories with less than 100 cases included Andaman and Nicobar Islands 97 (↑7), Sikkim 89 (↑1), and Meghalaya 52 (↑5).
Lakshadweep and Dadra Nagar Haveli remain the only States /Union Territories without any Covid-19 case.
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 7,855 (↑245), followed by Delhi 2,742 (↑62), Gujarat 1,846 (↑19), Tamil Nadu 1,201 (↑60), Uttar Pradesh 697 (↑25), West Bengal 668 (↑15), Madhya Pradesh 572 (↑8), Rajasthan 413 (↑8), Telangana 260 (↑7), Haryana 236 (↑4), Karnataka 246 (↑20), Andhra Pradesh 187 (↑7), Punjab 144 (↑6), Jammu & Kashmir 101 (↑6), Bihar 67 (↑5), Uttarakhand 41 (↑2), Odisha 25 (↑2), Kerala 24 (↑2), Jharkhand 15 (↑0), Chattisgarh 13 (↑0), Assam 12 (↑1), Puducherry 12 (↑2), Himachal Pradesh 10 (↑1), Chandigarh 6 (↑0), Goa 3 (↑0), Arunachal Pradesh 1 (↑0), Ladakh 1 (↑0), Meghalaya 1 (↑0), and Tripura 1 (↑0).
Five States/ Union Territory with Covid-19 cases have reported no deaths so far.
(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)
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In Delhi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal told a video press conference Jul 1 that the situation in the capital was improving and “not as terrible” as it was predicted a month ago. He said the number of recoveries in the city was increasing and the situation was now under control.
“It was predicted that by 30th June Delhi would have 1 lakh cases out of which 60,000 would be active cases but today we only have 26,000 active cases,” he said.
He also said, “We’ve increased the number of tests. There is a good indication, earlier around 31 out of 100 people whose samples were collected tested positive for coronavirus. Today, 13 out of 100 people test positive.”
A fall in the mortality numbers, a significant drop in Positivity Rate and early trends of a decline in new cases suggest that Delhi is finally attaining some stability in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, reported news18.com Jul 1.
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Regarding the number of Tibetan cases, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) has reported a total of 52 as of Jul 1 in India, Nepal and Bhutan, of which 26 were active while 24 had recovered and two had died.
The CTA reported no change in the total of 213 cases among Tibetans living in other countries abroad, of which 40 were active, 165 had recovered and eight had died.
The CTA report also says there had been a total of 107 cases in Chinese occupied Tibet, of which 106 had recovered and one had died.
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In Himachal Pradesh, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, while addressing Deputy Commissioners and Superintendents of Police through video-conferencing from Shimla on Jul 1, said his government had asked the Centre to allow the state to regulate the movement of people entering Himachal Pradesh from other states to contain the spread of the Covid pandemic.
This was because under Unlock-2 announced by the centre, there is supposed to be no restriction on inter-state and intra-state movement of persons and good.
The state had earlier put a halt on return of residents after what was seen as an alarming rise in new Covid-19 infections through returnees from other states.
The state government would regulate the influx of people entering the state so as to ensure their orderly movement and avoid any possible chance of spread of Covid cases, tribuneindia.com Jul 1 cited the chief minister as saying.
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases had surged close to the 10.5 million mark to reach 10,487,022 while a total of 511,546 had died as of Jul 01 at 2:03:50 AM, according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were 184,155 new cases and 6,028 new deaths during the past 26 hours or so across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were the US (2,636,538), Brazil (1,402,041), Russia (653,479), India (585,481) … China (84,785).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were the US (127,425), Brazil (59,594), the UK (43,815), Italy (34,767), France (29,846), Spain (28,355), Mexico (27,769), India (17,400) … China (4,641).
(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
