New Delhi: Jharkhand became the latest state in India to announce a partial ‘lockdown’ on Tuesday as it tried to break the chain of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, but such localized lockdowns have triggered a fresh exodus of panicked migrant workers and also hit economic activities across the country.
In the second wave, infection numbers are multiplying very fast, and more and more states are clamping down localized restrictions on the people’s movement and commerce, falling just short of a complete lockdown the like of which India faced last year.
These series of restrictions have already hampered electricity consumption and GST e-way bill collection. These are used to track economic activity, and it needs to be seen whether this softening is a blip, or marks a shift in a trend, India’s leading rating agency Crisil said.
With the pandemic caseload soaring over 2.5 lakh for the second day, Crisis warned of the grim economic scenario as with even limited restrictions on people’s movement and some businesses, power consumption and e-way GST bill collections are already down.
It also called for speeding up the vaccination drive, which had lost some of its steam recently. The Centre, on Monday, announced to vaccinate all the people above 18 years of age from May 1.
Despite restrictions, however, the business world is trying to continue manufacturing and construction activities. Travel, recreation, and restaurant takeaway services, for example, are also allowed in most states with social distancing measures in place.
The impact of these restrictions is beginning to affect retail mobility, which dipped across more states, with the highest drop in Maharashtra at 17.7 percentage points decline between March and April 18 on average.
With the second wave, India has replaced Brazil as the second most Covid-19 affected country in the world, after the US. On Monday, India recorded over 2.59 lakh infections in 24 hours, with a seven-day average being 2.33 lakh cases.
Importantly, Maharashtra, which for long had led India in terms of Covid-19 cases, has seen some fall in new caseloads. Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have emerged as new hotspots, while Delhi also announced lockdown, triggering a panicked exodus of migrant labourers on Monday.
Maharashtra’s share in caseloads has come down from 42.4 per cent in the week ended April 11 to 28.2 per cent in the week ended April 18, according to reports.
(VP)