Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been somewhat of a celebrity for us in recent weeks, making live appearances every now and then. A few weeks back, he first appeared to announce a ‘Janta Curfew’ for just one day on 22nd March 2020, but he returned a few days later to enforce a 21-day lockdown across the country.
It has been a struggle for everyone across India, including the police, law enforcers and the citizens themselves, the latter not usually used to being at home for so many weeks at once. The original lockdown was supposed to end tomorrow, 15th April but there was another speech pending from PM Modi this morning.
We more or less expected Modi to go ahead and extend the lockdown, with individual states already increasing the duration in the week gone by. This morning, the Prime Minister addressed the nation once again and went on to announce that the lockdown will extend till at least 3rd May 2020 and this all depends on the state of affairs over the next couple of weeks.
India has been able to control coronavirus to a great extent so far, not reporting as many cases as other top countries from across the world. When the lockdown was announced, India barely had around 550 positive COVID-19 cases and today, we stand at 10,453 cases and 350+ deaths, which is way less than USA (587k), Spain (170k), Italy (159k) and others.
The guidelines for Lockdown 2 are going to be more strict and they will be announced on Wednesday. So as we move into Phase 2 of the lockdown, get set to continue the practice of staying at home and practising social distancing. It’s an invisible virus and it’s going to be tough to fight it. The only way we can do it, is together!
