Coronavirus lockdown in Nagpur: The lockdown will be from March 15 to 21. (Represenational)
Nagpur in Maharashtra will go under lockdown for a week, from March 15 to March 21, due to the rising cases of coronavirus in the city. Essential services such as vegetable and fruit shops and milk booths will stay open. More parts of the state could go into lockdown, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray indicated as COVID-19 cases have been on the rise in Maharashtra for nearly a month.
Nagpur reported over 1,800 cases in the last 24 hours.
"Some areas of Maharashtra will witness strict lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus infection. The government is going to hold a special meeting with officials before coming out with the lockdown measures," Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said after taking his first shot of the anti-Covid vaccine.
The lockdown has been imposed in all the areas that come under the Nagpur Police Commissionerate.
The move comes two days after a ''Janata curfew'' was imposed for three days in Maharashtra's Jalgaon district, from 8 pm today to 8 am on Monday.
Maharashtra has reported the highest daily new COVID-19 cases at 13,659, almost 60 per cent of the daily new cases in the country. The state continues to have the highest number of Covid cases in India.
Mr Thackeray had left it to the local administration in each district to take a call on imposing stricter measures - including night curfews or partial lockdowns - to stem the cases of the infection.
The state's health department on Wednesday came up a seven- point action plan, including testing of close contacts, fast contact-tracing, mass testing in hot-spots and audit of deaths. All district administrations were asked to act upon the action plan.
Maharashtra, Kerala, Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu continue to report a high number of fresh COVID-19 cases and together account for 85.91 per cent of the new cases of the coronavirus infection reported in the country in a span of 24 hours, the Union health ministry said on Thursday.
India recorded 22,854 fresh Covid cases in the last 24 hours - the highest in two months - taking the total case load to 1,12,85,561.
Today marks a year since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 crisis as a pandemic.