Coronavirus India LIVE updates: At least 100 migrants hop on a truck to travel to Banaras in UP from Shikrapur on Pune-Ahmednagar road during the lockdown. (Express photos by Arul Horizon)
Coronavirus in India Live updates: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced an economic package worth Rs 20 lakh crore or 10 per cent of India’s GDP in 2019-20, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 PM on Wednesday to unveil the finer points of the package, which is aimed towards achieving the mission of a self-reliant Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
Meanwhile, with India reporting 122 deaths and 3,525 cases in the last 24 hours, the coronavirus pandemic casualties rose to 2,415 on Wednesday while the total number of infections crossed the 74,000-mark to reach 74,281 including the 24,385 people who have been treated and discharged so far.
The fourth phase of a nationwide lockdown will be in a new form with new rules, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Tuesday in his fifth address to the nation since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the country. 50 days since the initial lockdown was announced on March 24, lockdown 4.0 is expected to have more relaxations as the Prime Minister indicated in his televised address. “The novel coronavirus is going to be with us for long time, but we can’t let our lives revolve around it,” he said. The details of a further lockdown will be announced before May 18.
Globally, 291,942 people have died and 4,261,747 have been infected so far. As many as 1,493,414 people have been cured across the world. The United States has recorded the maximum number of deaths and cases at 82,376 and 1,369,574 respectively.
Coronavirus India Live updates: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation five days ahead of the end of the third phase of the lockdown
Coronavirus India Live updates: One of the busiest stations for trains route to North India, the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus in Mumbai, after rail services were resumed Tuesday
Coronavirus India Live updates: A little girl gets her temperature screened.
On Wednesday, Delhi reported 359 fresh cases of Coronavirus and 20 more deaths have been reported taking the total death toll to 106. The 20 deaths have been reported from April and May after the government received case sheets from the hospitals. The total number of cases in Delhi have reached 7,998.
Among the deaths reported on Wednesday, one is from Lok Nayak, 15 from RML hospital and three from Sir Ganga Ram Kolmet hospitals. A total of 86 deaths have been reported from the 10 designated COVID hospitals while 20 are from other hospitals. Over the last two days, the government has reported 33 deaths after collating the data received from several hospitals.
Lending a strong voice of support to Mamata Banerjee who charged the Centre with discrimination, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel said that leaking of central action and communications to the media ahead of informing states tantamounts to undermining their power. Within days of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's video conference with the chief ministers, Baghel said that even the Tamil Nadu chief minister has raised concern of not coordinating and informing states ahead of sending migrant trains, putting everybody in a grave danger of the novel coronavirus. "If the statements are made (by central leaders) and the information is leaked to newspapers including about the visit of the central team, then the states are justified in getting angry," he told PTI in an interview. Making a strong case for a more coordinated approach in the battle against the coronavirus, Baghel said the states "need to be and must be" taken into confidence. --PTI
Delhi recorded 20 deaths and 359 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, according to the health bulletin. With this, the total number of deaths in Delhi has soared to 106 and total infections has reached 7,998. As many as 346 people have recovered in the last 24 hours.
Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram took to Twitter on Wednesday to express his views on PM Modi's economic package yesterday. He said that his party is looking forward to seeing how the Finance Minister fills the blank page given by PM Modi.
"We will also carefully examine who gets what? And the first thing we will look for is what the poor, hungry and devastated migrant workers can expect after they have walked hundreds of kilometres to their home states. We will also examine what the bottom half of the population (13 crore families) will get in terms of REAL MONEY," he tweeted.
"Yesterday, PM gave us a headline and a blank page. Naturally, my reaction was a blank! Today, we look forward to the FM filling the blank page. We will carefully count every ADDITIONAL rupee that the government will actually infuse into the economy," he said in another tweet.
The Nagaland government has said that they will offer Rs 10,000 to those residents who opt not to return to the state right now. A press statement by Chief Secretary Temjen Toy on Tuesday said that many bodies (civil societies, tribal hohos and NGOs) in the state had appealed to stranded citizens not to come back unless its ‘unavoidable’. This request came in the view of the Centre’s announcement on special trains services from Delhi and other major cities — which affected the state’s initial plan of bringing back citizens in a staggered manner. The statement said that the government is working on a “new standard operating procedure (SOP) so that the required quarantine and other protocols are put in place before the arrival of the stranded and distressed citizens.” Toy also said that they were prioritising return of “stranded senior citizens and patients who had gone for medical treatment, distressed persons and those facing difficulties for repatriation to the State”. Nagaland currently has no active COVID-19 case.
The relaxation in lockdown rules from May 4, which has seen the resumption of many activities, and easing of restrictions on movement of people, has so far not had any big impact on the spread of the disease, as was being feared. One week after the relaxations were allowed, there are still no signs that there is any major surge in the number of cases.
On Tuesday, 3,532 new cases were discovered all over the country, taking the total number of confirmed infections to 74,276. Of these, at least 24,385 people have already recovered, and therefore are no longer in a position to pass on the disease to others. The number of deaths has reached 2415.
After going past Delhi, the number of novel Coronavirus cases in Tamil Nadu look poised to overtake Gujarat as well. Tamil Nadu discovered 716 new infections on Tuesday, and now has 8718 confirmed cases. Gujarat, the state with the second-highest number of cases, has 8904 with the addition of 362 new cases on Tuesday.
As has been happening every day, most of the new cases in Tamil Nadu came from Chennai which now has close to 5,000 cases. This is more than 55 per cent of the total number of cases in the state. But Chennai is not alone in this. In several states, the bulk of cases, more than 50 per cent, are concentrated in just one or two cities. Mumbai accounts for over 60 per cent of all cases in Maharashtra while of all cases in Gujarat. Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Kolkata in West Bengal are also in a similar situation (see box). These cities also account for a large proportion of deaths in the states.
As many as 169 Indian students queue at Dhaka International Airport to board the special Air India repatriation flight to Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir under Vande Bharat Mission.
Several migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh, who had been left stranded in Gurgaon during the lockdown, commenced their journey home aboard one of the "shramik special" trains this morning.
The mega stimulus plan has already lifted the markets, with the benchmark equity market indices on the BSE and National Stock Exchange (NSE) opened nearly 4 per cent higher.At 9:15, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading 1,214.15 points (3.87 per cent) higher at 32,585.27, while the broader Nifty 50 was at 9,544.30, up 347.75 points (3.78 per cent).
The details of the Rs 20 lakh crore package, which would help every section including workers, farmers, middle class and industrial units, would be announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the coming days, the Prime Minister said.“I announce a special economic package today.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 PM today to announce the details of an economic package worth Rs 20 lakh crore or 10 per cent of India’s GDP in 2019-20, aimed towards achieving the mission of a self-reliant Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
After several chief ministers demanded more authority in classifying zones in their jurisdiction during the video conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, the Centre now plans to involve states and seek their views in drawing up the list of green, orange and red zones.
It is also likely that entire districts will no longer be designated but smaller units. “We have asked states to share their inputs and views with us by May 15. These will be factored in the next list. In all probability zoning will not happen by districts but instead by smaller administrative units,” a senior government functionary who was present in the Monday meeting told The Indian Express.
Our data further reveals substantial variation in income losses by state of residence (See map). The five most affected states are Tripura, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana. Notably, economic impact by state does not strongly track the extent of the outbreak. Rather, we conjecture that income per-capita and occupational composition before the lockdown, lockdown severity, and effectiveness of the delivery of aid are likely contributors to this cross-state variation.
The spread of Covid-19 and the economic lockdown enacted in response by the Government of India have resulted in significant economic hardship. These effects are both substantial and widespread. Eighty-four percent of Indian households report decreases in income since the lockdown. A third of Indian households report not having enough resources to go on for more than a week before facing distress.
These headline statistics, which are drawn from our analysis of a nationally representative survey of Indian households conducted by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) between April 18 and April 30, 2020, should be a call to action for Indian policymakers as they try to best balance a public health crisis and an economic crisis.
The Rs 20-lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi sounds big but will burn only a small hole in the government’s finances. A large part of it, or as much as Rs 8.04 lakh crore, is additional liquidity injected into the system by the Reserve Bank of India through various measures in February, March and April. Add to this the Rs 1.7 lakh crore fiscal package announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 27. The balance of the economic package, details of which are not yet known, then stands at Rs 10.26 lakh crore. It is expected that the Finance Minister will announce the details at the earliest since this has a bearing on the bond markets. Read the math behind economic package here
To generate employment in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak and the lockdown, the Bihar government has requested the Centre for the early release of quarterly funds allocated for Panchayati Raj institutions and local bodies. The 15th Finance Commission recommended allocation of Rs 7,436 crore for Panchayati Raj and local body schemes in Bihar for 2020-21 fiscal. The state government has also requested the Centre for raising the state’s borrowing limit under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act to tide over the financial crisis.
The benchmark equity market indices on the BSE and National Stock Exchange (NSE) opened nearly 4 per cent higher on Wednesday, a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of a Rs 20 lakh crore economic package to help cushion the COVID-19 economic impact. At 9:15, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading 1,214.15 points (3.87 per cent) higher at 32,585.27, while the broader Nifty 50 was at 9,544.30, up 347.75 points (3.78 per cent). Follow Sensex LIVE updates here
With India reporting 122 deaths in the last 24 hours, the death toll due to the coronavirus pandemic rose to 2,415 on Wednesday while the total number of infections crossed the 74,000-mark to reach 74,281 including the 24,385 people who have been treated and discharged so far.
“I announce a special economic package today. This will play an important role in the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ (Self-reliant India Campaign). The announcements made by the government over Covid earlier, decisions of RBI, and today’s package totals to Rs 20 lakh crore. This is 10 per cent of India’s GDP,” Modi said. The Prime Minister emphasised on India becoming self-reliant, a point he has been stressing in almost all speeches he has made since the crisis began.
According to him, self-reliance would be based on five pillars — an economy that takes quantum jumps, not incremental gains; modern infrastructure; a technology-driven system; vibrant demography; and a demand and supply chain.