The coronavirus cases in India continue to spread rapidly as the country has marked significant and consecutive highest jumps in the COVID-19 tally over a major part of the past two weeks. With nearly 10,000 new cases being reported every day, India's COVID-19 count has hit a new high, crossing the 2.76 lakh-mark, while the death toll has crossed the 7,700-mark as well.
Maharashtra continues to be the epicentre of the coronavirus spread where the number of cases has witnessed an even large spike recently. According to the Health Ministry, Maharashtra has the highest number of cases with more than 94,000 positive cases of infection and over 3,400 deaths. As many as 3,254 new COVID-19 cases were reported from the state in the past 24 hours.
Shopping malls, religious places, hotels, and restaurants have now been reopened in most states from Monday after more than two months of sustained lockdown. The current phase of re-opening, called 'Unlock 1', takes an economic focus. The government intends on being smart about implementing the lockdown in select places so that the economic activity of the country, as a whole, does not take any more hits.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had also released the standard operating procedure (SOPs) for malls, restaurants, and hotels as they opened these establishments under relaxed guidelines. But a lot of details were also left to the discretion of the states to finetune.
07:15 IST Thursday, 11 June 2020
Over 1,500 more COVID-19 cases and 97 deaths were reported in Mumbai on Wednesday, taking the total number of cases to 52,445 in the city, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said.