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HealthAsia

Coronavirus: New Delhi imposes snap nighttime curfew

April 7, 2021

New Delhi residents will no longer be allowed on the streets past 10 p.m. India recorded more infections in the past week than any other country in the world.

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Police keep vigil at an empty street in New Delhi at night
The Indian capital imposed a night curfew a day after the nation posted a record coronavirus surgeImage: Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty Images

India's capital New Delhi imposed an immediate nightly curfew on Tuesday due to a "sudden increase in COVID-19 cases" and a "high positivity rate," the Delhi regional government said.

The curfew was announced after India recorded more than 100,000 new daily cases on Monday for the first time, and nearly 97,000 on Tuesday.

Delhi reported some 3,550 new positive cases on Monday. This remains below its peak of almost 9,000 in November 2020, when it was one of the worst-hit cities across the country.

What changes with the New Delhi's curfew?

The public movement ban will be in place each night from 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. local time.

Only essential services or people traveling to and from vaccination centers will be allowed on the streets.

It is set to remain in place until April 30.

What is happening in Maharashtra?

The New Delhi restrictions follow shortly after the state of Maharashtra, where the financial capital Mumbai is located, announced a weekend lockdown and night curfew on its population of 110 million on Sunday. 

Over the past week, India has recorded more infections than any other country in the world, and the state of Maharashtra currently accounts for more than half of new cases reported each day.

A man walks past closed shops at a roadside market in Mumbai
Financial hub Mumbai has also imposed a night curfew on its residentsImage: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images

Rising COVID-19 fatalities in the states of Punjab and Chhattisgarh are also cause for "extreme concern," India's top-ranked health official Rajesh Bhushan told reporters on Tuesday.

What about vaccines?

India's health ministry said Tuesday that more than 83 million vaccination shots have been administered. This is the most after the United States and China, but it lags far behind in immunizations per capita. The country of 1.3 billion in attempting to inoculate 300 million people by the end of July.

China, whose population is only slightly bigger than India's, has already administrated 142 million doses. In the US, with a population of over 331 million, some 169 million doses have been given.

Leaders in several states including Delhi and Maharashtra have appealed to the federal government for a faster and wider roll-out of vaccines, with some like Odisha repeatedly citing shortages even for prioritized groups such as the elderly.

kmm/dj (AFP, Reuters)