Coronavirus testing and vaccination continued in Maharashtra on Tuesday (April 6) as a second wave of coronavirus infections swamped India’s richest state.
Home to India’s financial capital Mumbai, Maharashtra accounts for nearly a quarter of India’s 12.7 million coronavirus infections. If the state were a country, its caseload of more than 3 million would be tenth largest in the world.
Desperate to slow the spread of the disease, the state imposed a night curfew since Monday (April 5) for the rest of the month, shut down restaurants, malls and places of worship and barred the movement of most people on weekends.
Meanwhile, the Delhi government also announced a night curfew in the capital until April 30, Reuters partner ANI reported.
Many Indian state leaders, and the Indian Medical Association, have asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to open up vaccinations to most of the country’s hundreds of millions of adults following a second surge in infections. India this month expanded its inoculation programme to include everyone above the age of 45.
India breached the grim milestone of 100,000 daily infections for the first time on Monday, and cases jumped by 96,982 on Tuesday, data from the health ministry showed. There were 446 new deaths, taking the total to 165,547.