(TibetanReview.net, May31’20) – India on May 30 announced plans to further ease its strict national lockdown even as the country reported yet another record daily rise in new coronavirus cases in a move to save the plunging economy and the precarious livelihood of tens of millions of informal sector workers. In fact, lockdown 5.0, which begins on Jun 1, will become stage 1 of unlock 1.0 till the end of the month. Strict lockdown will be enforced only in the containment zones and the buffer zones in their vicinities.
All activities outside containment zones have been allowed to resume in a phased manner from Jun 1. In particular, all restrictions on intra-state and inter-state movement of people have been removed, which means no permission/approval/e-permit will be required.
From Jun 8, religious places and places of worship for public, hotels, restaurants, other hospitality services, and shopping malls will be permitted to reopen in non-containment zones in the first stage of a three-phase plan.
The duration of the nationwide night curfew has been shortened from the existing 7pm-7am to 9pm-5am.
In the second phase, School and colleges may open – possibly in July – after consultations with states.
And the third phase may, depending on “the situation” and at a date yet to be determined, see international travel, metro services, cinemas, sporting events and gyms being allowed to restart.
The Health Ministry is to issue Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to be followed in the reopened activities. The main purpose will be to ensure social distancing.
But states may impose their own restrictions in all the above cases. Hence, to stop inter-state movement, states will have to give ‘wide publicity’ in advance so that people are not stuck at borders.
The main focus of the lockdown restrictions will be in the containment zones. More than 80% of the active Covid-19 cases are in five states – Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh – and more than 60% of the cases are in five cities, including Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad, according to official data.
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India reported 8,380 new Covid-19 cases during the past 24 hour as of May 31 at 8AM (GMT+5:30), yet another daily record, taking the country’s total to 182,143. The country also reported 193 new deaths during the same 24-hour period, taking the total to 5,164 deaths.
A total of 86,984 had recovered, leaving the country with 89,995 active cases.
India is currently the country with the 9th most number of cumulative cases and 13th most number of deaths from the global pandemic.
The worst hit states with more than 10,000 cases were led by Maharashtra with a cumulative total of 65,168 cases after 2,940 fresh cases were reported in the past 24 hours, followed by Tamil Nadu with 21,184 (↑938) cases, Delhi with 18,549 (↑1163) cases, and Gujarat with 16,343 (↑409) cases.
Other states with more than 1,000 cases were Rajasthan 8,617 (↑252), Madhya Pradesh 7,891 (↑246), Uttar Pradesh 7,445 (↑151), West Bengal 5,130 (↑317), Bihar 3,636 (↑260), Andhra Pradesh 3,569 (↑133), Karnataka 2,922 (↑141), Telangana 2,499 (↑74), Jammu & Kashmir 2,341 (↑177), Punjab 2,233 (↑36), Haryana 1,923 (↑202), Odisha 1,819 (↑96), Kerala 1,208 (↑58), Assam 1,185 (↑161).
Apart from the above states, others with more than 100 cases included Uttarakhand 749 (↑33), Jharkhand 563 (↑52), Chattisgarh 447 (↑32), Himachal Pradesh 313 (↑18), Chandigarh 289 (↑0), and Tripura 268 (↑17).
States/Union Territories with less than 100 cases included Ladakh, 74 (↑0), Goa 70 (↑1), Manipur 62 (↑3), Puducherry 51 (↑0), Nagaland 36 (↑11), Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 33 (↑0), Meghalaya 27 (↑0), Arunachal Pradesh 4 (↑1), Dadar Nagar Haveli 2 (↑0), Sikkim 1 (↑0), and Mizoram 1 (↑0).
Maharashtra also had the most number of deaths at 2,197 (↑99), followed by Gujarat 1,007 (↑27), Delhi 416 (↑18), Madhya Pradesh 343 (↑9), West Bengal 309 (↑7), Uttar Pradesh 201 (↑3), Rajasthan 193 (↑9), Tamil Nadu 160 (↑6), Telangana 77 (↑6), Andhra Pradesh 60 (↑0), Karnataka 48 (↑0), Punjab 44 (↑2), Jammu & Kashmir 28 (↑0), Haryana 20 (↑1), Bihar 20 ↑5), Kerala 9 ↑1), Odisha 7 (↑0), Himachal Pradesh 5 (↑0), Jharkhand 5 (↑0), Uttarakhand 5 (↑0), Assam 4 (↑0), Chandigarh 4 (↑0), and Meghalaya 1 (↑0).
(Source: https://www.mohfw.gov.in/)
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Across the world the total number of Covid-19 cases crossed the 6 million mark to reach 6,075,786 while a total of 369,433 had died as of May 30 at 2:02:43 PM (GMT-4), according to the Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
There were 133,794 new cases and 365,252 new deaths during the preceding 24 hours across 188 countries and regions.
The countries with the most number of reported Covid-19 cases thus far were US (1,770,384), Brazil (498,440), Russia (405,843), UK (274,219), Spain (239,228), Italy (232,664), France (188,752), Germany (183,302), India (182,490), Turkey (163,103), Peru (155,671), Iran (148,950), Chile (94,858), Canada (91,681), Mexico (87,512), and China (84,128).
The countries with the most number of Covid-19 deaths were US (103,781), UK (38,458), Italy (33,340), Brazil (28,834), France (28,774), Spain (27,125), Mexico (9,779), Belgium (9,453), Germany (8,539), Iran (7,734), Canada (7,159), Netherlands (5,970), India (5,186), Russia (4,693), and China (4,638).
(Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)
