India has more than 12 lakh active cases at the present. (Express Photo by Kamleshwar Singh)Coronavirus India Lockdown LIVE tracker, Covid Live updates: The ugly reality of the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has hit home as India overtook Brazil to become the second worst-hit nation in the world. India has arrived at this grim milestone as states are reporting a high caseload day after day. While Maharashtra continues to be the most affected state in India at the moment, other states have also shown a disturbing rise in the cases. In terms of metro cities, by Monday evening, Delhi had recorded over 11,000 cases. This caseload is far worse than Mumbai.
Photos of migrants have started appearing on news channels and social media confirming the worst fears of many. As Maharashtra contemplate hard lockdown, people have started migrating to their hometowns. Many have said that while the picture may not be as bad as what we saw in 2020, things still look very bleak. Migrants have been seen at the railway stations, bus stops in Maharashtra, Delhi and other states moving back to their villages.
While the health infrastructure cries for help, the government has approved another corona vaccine. Russia’s Sputnik V will be available soon, reports say. As health experts say that people must be dissuaded from gathering in large numbers, Uttarakhand is hosting one of the largest religious congregation on the Earth – Kumbh Mela 2021. The Indian Express reports that on Monday on the occasion of Somvati Amavasya’s ‘Shahi Snan’, over 28 lakh people visited the Mela site to take the holy dip! Similar huge numbers were seen in the election rallies in West Bengal with many political parties flaunting the ‘huge support’ on social media.
While there is no official word on the link between the ‘double mutant strain’ and the fresh Covid surge, reports suggest that it is increasingly becoming difficult to detect the strain even by the RT-PCR test. The ICMR need to do more research on this to bring any conclusive evidence about this.
As the world battles the second wave, here are the latest updates on the corona lockdown, restrictions and other breakthrough studies from India and across the globe: