Enamul Hafiz Latifee reports,
The Maharashtra government on Saturday decided to extend the COVID-19 lockdown till 30 April 2020 with Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray underlining that it may be further extended if people do not cooperate. The Chief Minister said it looks like the situation is in control, but one will have to be cautious.
Maharashtra becomes the third state to extend the lockdown period after Odisha and Punjab.
“The lockdown may continue even after 30 April 2020 if people don’t cooperate in preventing the outbreak,” said CM Uddhav Thackeray while addressing people via video call. Thackeray also said that while making the implementation stricter in the second phase, some of the sectors will be excluded and the government is working on it. The CM further said that 60 to 70 percent of positive patients in Mumbai have mild symptoms.
So far, Maharastra is the worst-hit state by COVID-19, with 110 dead and 1,574 cases Earlier in the day, several Chief Ministers impressed upon Prime Minister Modi to extend the national lockdown, which ends on 14 April 2020, to contain the highly contagious Coronavirus disease.
The PM Modi does not spell out his decision on the lockdown at the meeting. An official spokesperson confirmed that most heads of the states requested the Centre to extend the national lockdown. “The Central Government is considering this request,” KS Dhatwalia, the government’s principal spokesperson said.
Thackeray said that the issue of the extension of the lockdown was discussed in the review meeting with the PM. “I was asked to speak first about the COVID-19 situation in Maharashtra and ongoing lockdown. I informed the PM that Maharashtra is going to extend the lockdown by two weeks. The second phase of the lockdown will need to be strictly followed with more restrictions on the movement of the people. But there is no other ‘way out’ to fight the war against the pandemic,” he said.
Mumbai’s COVID-19 situation surpassed the 100-patient mark on 31 March 2020, almost three weeks after a couple from Andheri was identified as COVID-19 positive in the city. On 02 April 2020, the city’s tally crossed 200 and since then cases have tripled in the past week. The first COVID-19 death in Mumbai was recorded on 17 March 2020, when a 64 year old man surrendered to the infection at Kasturba Hospital.
Health officials of the state have said the number of COVID-19 cases has recorded a 147.8% jump since 04 April 2020, in a week, when there were 635 COVID-19 positives. More than 500 cases of Coronavirus disease were reported in India in the last 12 hours, bringing the number of COVID-19 patients to 7,447 on Saturday, on 11 April 2020, the Union Home Ministry data showed.