India lockdown1/30/2024 Gangakhedkar of the ICMR said the country had enough kits "for six weeks" but did not specify how many. #IndiaFightsCoronavirus A total of 650,000 kits, including Rapid Antibody Tests and RNA Extraction Kits have been despatched early today from Guangzhou Airport to #India | #2019nCoV #StayHomeSaveLives this week, Dr. The Ministry of Health and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), which has been overseeing testing protocols and pandemic-related policy, did not respond to questions from CBC News. "There have been pockets of containment, but there is no indication that authorities have used this three-week window to address the big picture." "The three-week lockdown was supposed to buy the government time to ramp up testing, increase surveillance and contact tracing, acquire PPE (personal protective equipment) kits in requisite numbers for frontline workers, train health personnel, prepare hospitals to receive COVID-19 patients, and draw up a comprehensive plan for controlling the spread of the virus," said Anant Bhan, a researcher in global health, bioethics and health policy. The government's relief package, which includes food, gas and cash for poor households and health insurance for medical staff, has been criticized by some as too modest, at about 0.8 per cent of GDP, excluding millions of those who need it. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday additional assistance would be announced in the coming days.Ī doctor scans residents from Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, with an infrared thermometer to check their temperature as a precautionary measure against the spread of COVID-19 in Mumbai. Researchers have compiled cases of almost 200 Indians who have died as a result of lockdown-related distress, and social media is replete with SOS calls and cellphone videos from labourers stuck inside their tenements or cramped work sites, which double as accommodation for some. Much of the labour force in India's cities is made up of interstate economic migrants from villages around the country (at least 45 million of them, according to the 2011 Census), and as transportation and their means of employment ground to a halt, a large number were left with no choice but to walk hundreds of kilometres back to their villages in a desperate bid for survival. Many of them live where they work and were left without access to income or basic necessities after most activity in the country was shut down last month. India relies on millions of migrant workers who come to the cities to work. Migrants workers in Mumbai rest inside a workshop after it was shut down. Hundreds of migrant workers - angry at being locked down with little access to daily essentials and no income - protested in the streets of Mumbai and Surat, a textile manufacturing hub in western India, demanding authorities transport them back to their villages. There had already been reports of hunger and distress among the poor, who have been hit hardest by the lockdown, and news that the 21-day countrywide shutdown would be extended by another 19 days to May 3 sparked further chaos. The situation on the ground, however, suggests otherwise: While proportional to its population of 1.38 billion, India's COVID-19 caseload is small, it's been rising despite the lockdown and has surpassed 16,000, with 2,154 new cases reported Saturday, the highest increase in a single day. Shortly after extending what was already one of the strictest COVID-19 lockdowns by almost another three weeks, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured those watching his televised address this week that "the country is in a very well-managed position."
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