NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India reported 40,953 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, the biggest daily jump in almost four months, with the richest state and Maharashtra’s economic backbone responsible for more than half of the infections.
Deaths increased from 188 to 159,404, informed the Ministry of Health, highlighting the resurgence of the virus in the third most affected country in the world, after the United States and Brazil.
Some regions in India have already imposed restraint measures, including restaurant closures and closures, and others are being considered.
Doctors attributed the new wave of infection to people’s relaxed attitude towards wearing masks and other measures of social detachment, warning that hospital wards were filling up quickly in states like Maharashtra.
Maharashtra reported a record 25,681 cases, including 3,000 in the financial capital of Mumbai, in the past 24 hours.
The state of 112 million people imposed a blockade in some neighborhoods and restricted cinemas, hotels and restaurants until the end of the month. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray warned that a broader blockade is an option, according to local media.
The increase in COVID-19 cases in India peaked at almost 100,000 a day in September and had been dropping steadily until the end of last month.
In addition to Maharashtra, the Indian states of Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh reported an increase in new cases.
The capital, New Delhi, has reported a steady increase in infections over the past two weeks, prompting city officials to increase vaccination to 125,000 doses a day, from about 40,000.
Many Indians began to question the government’s highly publicized vaccine export campaign, when only a fraction of the country’s 1.35 billion people were inoculated.
The government announced plans to inoculate 300 million people, or a fifth of the population, by August. However, only 42 million have been vaccinated so far, while the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer has donated or exported almost 60 million doses.
Reporting by Aditi Shah; edition by Jane Wardell