Coronavirus lockdown in India has been extended till June 30 with more relaxations.
While the lockdown has been extended in containment zones, relaxations outside containment zones include reopening of religious places for public from June 8.
Hotels, restaurants and shopping malls also to open from June 8. Decision on opening educational institutions to be taken in July.
Jan 13: India lost more than $1.33 billion to internet restrictions in 2019 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pushed ahead with his party’s Hindu nationalist agenda, raising tensions and sparking nationwide protests.
The worst shutdown has been in Kashmir, where after intermittent closures in the first half of the year, the internet has been cut off since Aug. 5 following the government’s decision to revoke the special autonomous status of the country’s only Muslim-majority state, a study said. The prologued closure was criticized by India’s highest court, which ruled Friday that the “limitless” internet shutdown enforced by the government for the last five months was illegal and asked that it be reviewed.
India imposed more internet restrictions than any other large democracy, according to the Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2019 report released by Top10VPN, a U.K.-based digital privacy and security research group. The South Asian nation recorded the third-highest losses after Iraq and Sudan, which lost $2.31 billion and $1.86 billion respectively to disruptions. Worldwide internet restrictions caused losses worth $8.05 billion, the report said.
The cost of internet blackouts was calculated using indicators from groups including the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union, and the Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Center. It includes social media shutdowns in its calculations.
India’s ministry of information and technology didn’t respond to an email seeking a response to the report’s findings.
‘Conservative Estimates’
Through 2019, India shut access to the internet for over 4,000 hours. The report added shutdowns in India were often narrowly targeted, down to the level of blocking city districts for a few hours to allow security forces to restore order. Many of these incidents were not included in the report.
“These are conservative estimates,” said Simon Migliano, head of research at U.K.-based Top10VPN. “Internet shutdowns are increasing and it shows a damaging trend.”
India’s other major internet disruptions coincided with two moves by the government that affect India’s Muslim minority. The first disruption took place in November in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan after the Supreme Court handed a victory to Hindu groups over Muslim petitioners in a long-simmering dispute over a plot of land.
There were further disruptions in December when protests erupted against the introduction of a religion-based law that allows undocumented migrants of all faiths except Islam from neighbouring countries to seek Indian citizenship. The government enforced shutdowns across Uttar Pradesh and some Northeastern states in order to quell the protests, the report said.
New Delhi, Apr 11: With 40 deaths and 1,035 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, India on Saturday witnessed a sharpest ever increase in coronavirus cases, taking the tally of the infected people in the country to 7,447, as per the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday.
According to the official data, among 7447 COVID-19 positive cases, 6,565 are active cases and 643 are cured, discharged and migrated and 239 patients who have succumbed to the virus.
Maharashtra has reported the highest number of cases in the country which stands at 1,574, including 188 cured and discharged and 110 deaths, followed by Tamil Nadu with 911 corona positive cases.
On the other hand, the national capital has reported 903 cases, which include 25 recovered cases and 13 deaths.
While 553 have detected positive for the infection in Rajasthan, Telangana has 473 corona cases and Chhattisgarh and Chandigarh have reported 18 cases each.
Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, that borders the national capital, has 431 and 177 cases, respectively.
Kerala, which reported India's first coronavirus case, has 364 confirmed cases.
The newly carved union territories -- Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir--- have 15 and 207 cases, respectively.
The least number of COVID-19 cases have reported from the northeast region of the country. While Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, and Tripura have only 1 corona positive case, Assam has 29 people infected with the virus, which is the highest in the region.
Geneva, Jun 22: The global count of coronavirus cases has surpassed 8.7 million, with 183,020 new cases recorded on Sunday, the World Health Organisation said in its daily situation report.
Over the last 24 hours, 4,743 people died from COVID-19 worldwide, taking the death toll to 461,715 fatalities, according to the report.
The cumulative global toll of confirmed cases has now reached 8,708,008, as stated in the report.
The WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, shared that Europe accounts for 31 per cent of COVID-19 cases and 43 per cent of COVID-19 deaths globally.
Dr Kluge highlighted that several countries continue to face increasing disease incidence and that "preparing for the autumn is a priority now at the WHO Regional Office for Europe"
The United States continues to be worst affected by the contagion with the highest count of cases and fatalities -- 2.2 million and 118,895, respectively.
The novel coronavirus was declared a pandemic by WHO on March 11.
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