Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his visit, as coronavirus crisis escalates in India. Though India is added to the ‘red list’, Mr Johnson is hopeful that the pandemic will not dampen the spirit of bilateral engagements between the two countries, as the Prime Ministers are now scheduled to meet online.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s India visit on 26 April for a day has been cancelled due to the escalating coronavirus crisis in India. On Monday, UK added India to the ‘red list’ barring travel from 4am on Friday 23 April including those people who have travelled from or transited through India in the last 10 days.
This list will not include British, Irish and third country nationals with UK residency rights but on arrival they will be needed to stay at a government approved quarantine facility for 10 days.
A joint statement by the UK and India announced, “In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week.
“Instead, Prime Ministers [Narendra] Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India. They will remain in regular contact beyond this and look forward to meeting in person later this year.”
On last Friday, despite No 10 insisting that the trip would go ahead after cutting short from 4 days to a day, they decided to entirely drop the plan, after a total of 103 cases of the Indian variant have been detected in the UK
The trip that aimed at boosting trade and investment ties and signing of the UK-India Enhanced Trade Partnership, had originally been due to take place in January. But it was called off because of the UK lockdown.
During the 4-day visit plan, Mr Johnson was meant to go to Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai, besides New Delhi and was also meant to be joined by a delegation consisting of businessmen and journalists from the UK.
Mr Johnson said it was frustrating to have to call off the trip but said much of the work could be done remotely before they met in person.
Though many details about the strength and major characteristics of this variant (officially known as B.1.617) is unknown, some scientists believe UK is already late from preventing another surge by delaying the decision to close border to India.
As hospitals in India run short of bed and oxygen, India has widened its vaccination programme to all adults over the age of 18, who will be offered a coronavirus jab starting from 1 May. However, with vaccines in short supply in many states, it is unclear where these additional doses will come from.
Fight to save India from complete lockdown: PM Modi
As more states went for lockdown-like restrictions to battle the raging second Covid-19 wave, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday stressed that use of lockdown should be the "last resort" and that the focus should rather be on micro-containment zones. Modi's remarks in his address to the nation where he also said the second wave has become a major crisis came on a day when India's active Covid-19 cases crossed 2 million after India sees more than 259,170 new infections and a record 1,761 new fatalities.
PM Modi said the Centre, state governments and the private sector are working together to make oxygen available to all those who need it. Efforts are on to increase the number of beds for Covid patients in hospitals, he added.
Earlier, during a meeting via video conference, Modi asked vaccine manufacturers to scale up production capacity to vaccinate all citizens in the shortest possible time. Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, Health Minister Rajesh Tope has said all ministers have requested Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to impose a complete lockdown in the state from 8 pm tomorrow. “We have made our request. Now it is up to the CM to take the final call,” Tope was quoted as saying. Curfew-like restrictions on the movement of people in the state were already imposed on April 14 and would be in effect till May 1.
The new fatalities include 503 from Maharashtra, 170 from Chhattisgarh, 161from Delhi, 127 from Uttar Pradesh, 110 from Gujarat, 81 from Karnataka, 68 from Punjab, 66 from Madhya Pradesh, 50 from Jharkhand, 42 each from Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, 29 from Haryana, 28 from West Bengal and 25 from Kerala. Since the number of cases increase alarmingly, there is acute shortage of hospital beds, oxygen and medicine in almost all states.
Gujarat on tenterhooks
Gujarat added yet another record high of 11,403 Covid cases and 117 deaths. The flood of cases on a daily basis has manifested in queues which are getting longer outside designated Covid-19 hospitals across the state. Experts said that the widening mismatch between people falling ill and those recovering has triggered a crisis of hospital beds with oxygen with almost all government and private facilities conceding they are bursting at the seams with the overload of patients. By Monday evening, 88% of the beds across Gujarat were reported occupied. In Ahmedabad, out of 5,578 beds in 160-odd hospitals, 97% were occupied with only five beds available in a ventilator or ICU. Even the MediCity had 2,300-plus patients, indicating 98% occupancy with no ICU or ventilator available.
Delhi placed under lockdown for a week
A beleaguered Delhi government has imposed a week-long lockdown in the city from 10 pm onwards on Monday till 5 am on April 26 to arrest the alarming rise in Covid cases. The surge has left the healthcare infrastructure stretched to its limits and caused acute shortage of oxygen. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal warned that if strict measures were not taken now, the healthcare system could collapse. All non-essential movement will remain shut with the aim to break the chain of coronavirus transmission.
Yogi govt rules out lockdown
The Uttar Pradesh government refused to go for a lockdown, saying it was necessary to protect livelihoods of people, after the Allahabad High Court directed the state government to enforce closure of government and private establishments in five cities - Lucknow, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Kanpur and Gorakhpur - till April 26 to break the lethal Covid chain.
Hours after the high court directive, the UP government issued a statement, saying a “full lockdown would not be implemented in cities right now. People are voluntarily shutting establishments.” “In light of high court order, it is to be said Corona cases have gone up in the state and there is need for strictness in controlling spread of the virus. The government has taken several steps and in future will also take more severe steps,” a government spokesperson said.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath directed officials to check black marketing of remdesivir and other Covid-19 medicines, and invoke the stringent National Security Act (NSA) against those found guilty. During a meeting to review the Covid-19 situation in the state, Adityanath said one lakh more vials of remdesivir have been ordered and over 30,000 will be brought to the state in the next two to three days.
Positivity rate double
Amid a sharp rise in Covid-19 cases, the daily positivity rate in the last 12 days doubled from 8% to 16.7%. A consistent rise was seen since April 12 even as tests increased only marginally. Chhattisgarh recorded a phenomenal 30.3% infection rate. The national weekly positivity rate has increased from 3% to 13.5% in the last one month. Besides Chhattisgarh, states and UTs like Goa, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Ladakh also reported high positivity during April 11-17, depicting a steep rise in weekly positivity as compared to a month ago (March 11-17). Goa (24.2%), Maharashtra (24.1%) and Rajasthan (23.3%) have weekly positivity above 20%, indicating the need for much more testing and containment.
State-wise comparison of cases shows that Maharashtra has remained the worst affected state with more than 68,000 cases reported on a single day. Uttar Pradesh and Delhi are the second and third-worst affected state/ UT in terms of daily cases and these two together accounted for about 56,000 cases- nearly similar to the extent of cases reported in Maharashtra. Karnataka and Kerala also accounted for over 19,000 and 18,000 fresh cases. Apart from these five worst affected states which together accounted for 160,000 cases other states that reported over 10,000 fresh cases were Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Bihar, poll-bound West Bengal, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana has reported between 5,000 and 10,000 cases. There were 18 states and UTs that had reported over a thousand fresh cases.
With rising cases of deaths, You have wait for hours for the last writes of your dear ones.
