Coronavirus pandemic: India set to extend lockdown; US tops world COVID-19 cases and death toll

Team Suno Neta Saturday 11th of April 2020 11:46 PM

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Narendra Modi seen on a giant TV screen wearing a mask during his interaction with state CMs via videoconferencing.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Saturday, had a meeting with state chief ministers over a videoconference on the new coronavirus, COVID-19, outbreak in the country, which prompted the Centre to impose a 21-day nationwide lockdown. The lockdown abruptly disrupted public life and business, which analysts believe will severely affect India’s economy that was already facing a downturn.

Earlier, in an interaction with representatives from political parties, the prime minister had made it clear that his government’s priority is to save lives and not the economy.

At the beginning of Saturday’s meeting, Modi said the coronavirus situation in the country has “left us with no alternative but to extend the lockdown by at least two more weeks”. However, the prime minister indicated that the Centre may go for a phase-wise lifting of the lockdown and seek to restart economic activity in the country. Modi said while the earlier mantra was “jaan hai to jahan hai (the world exists only when we live), the way ahead would be guided by “jaan bhi, jahan bhi (our life as well as our world)”.

The prime minister’s interaction with the chief ministers ended with a broad agreement that while the focus would be on containment strategy for COVID-19 “hotspots”, the Centre will work on the states to seek ways how to enable greater public movement.

US COVID-19 death toll now highest in world

Meanwhile, the United States continue to reel under the coronavirus pandemic with both the number of infected people and deaths galloping by the day. On Saturday, the death toll in the US surpassed that of Italy with over 20,000 deaths.

The US already has the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the world with over half a million people having contacted the disease. The US also became the first country to report 2,000 deaths in a day.

Observers say that the measures to US COVID-19 crisis have been impaired by slow federal responses, especially in the initial days of the outbreak, and shoddy state-level approaches to tackle it.

The latest coronavirus India stats: