Coronavirus: India enters 'total
lockdown' after spike in cases
India's Prime Minister
Narendra Modi has imposed a nationwide lockdown in an attempt to slow the
spread of the coronavirus(COVID-19).
The restrictions came into force at midnight local time (18:30
GMT) and will be enforced for 21 days."There will be a total ban on venturing out of your
homes," Mr Modi said in a televised address.He appealed for people not to panic - but crowds quickly mobbed
stores in the capital, Delhi, and other cities.Correspondents say it is not clear how - or even if - people
will now be allowed out to buy food and other essentials.
The new measures follow a sharp increase in cases in recent
days. There have been 519 confirmed cases across India and 10 reported deaths.India - which has a population of 1.3BN - joins a growing list
of countries that have imposed similar measures.
It's an unprecedented lockdown in a country that has reported
519 confirmed cases and 10 deaths so far from the virus. But the government is
clearly bracing for the worst - one chilling projection says India could be
dealing with about 300 million cases, of which four to five million could be
severe.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the "total lockdown"
was to ''save India, to save its citizens, your family".
Why India requires a "hard" lockdown to fight the
virus has much to do with how crowded and densely packed a country it is. Both
its public and private spaces are crowded. "The population density and the
large number of poor people make it very vulnerable for the easy spread of such
an easily transmissible disease," says political scientist Rahul Verma.
With 450 people per square kilometre, India is one of the most
densely populated countries in the world. Some of the poor northern Indian
states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have almost twice as many people per sq km.
Indian households typically have between 4.5 to 5 people per
family, compared with an average of 2.5 people in an average American
household. Some 40% of Indian families are non-nuclear or joint families. Most
of these families will have one person above 60 years of age, one below 18 and
two others aged somewhere in between.
Three generations often live together. One infected person in a
family means the chance of widespread household spread - one of the fastest
modes of transmission - of infection is high. Locking up the entire family to
save the elderly who are the most vulnerable possibly makes sense.
Some 75% of Indian households - or 900 million Indians - with an
average size of five members live in two rooms or fewer. Three people living in
a single room in poor households is common.
Then there's the public transport. Between 85% and 90% of the
people who use India's busy railway network travel in overcrowded second-class
coaches. Passengers mostly belong to the lower middle class and the poor.
Shutting down the railways, which the government has already done, is the only
way to prevent infection.
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