India, which four months ago brought in the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown, is reimposing restrictions in many parts of the country as medical facilities are being pushed to the brink amid a surge of new infections since the initial measures were lifted.
In Pune, officials plan to shut the city down next week after a string of days with record high new infections. In Aurangabad, an industrial town, an extended curfew has cleared streets and shut factories. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous, almost all businesses were ordered closed this weekend.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown in March, halting industry and ordering all 1.3 billion Indians to stay home, the hope was that the country might escape the worst. But in recent weeks, as officials began lifting restrictions to save a badly wounded economy, infections spread quickly.
Now, hospitals are reporting shortages of ventilators and other medical supplies. Doctors in New Delhi are making life-or-death choices as empty beds dwindle and patients are turned away, sometimes to their deaths. The country’s seven-day average of new daily cases quadrupled over the month of May to about 8,000, and then tripled between the start of June to the present, reaching past 24,000. Recently, India’s caseload rose to the world’s third highest, with about 800,000 confirmed infections and more than 22,000 deaths.
Maharashtra, the home to Mumbai and one of the hardest hit states, has recorded more than 238,400 cases. On Saturday, it added two more: the Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, 77, and his son, Abhishek Bachchan, who both tweeted that they had tested positive and were hospitalized.
In Pune, Mahendra Purohit, who runs a dry goods store, said that everyone he knew was wearing a mask and staying home as much as possible, but still, “The cases keep rising and rising.”
