New Delhi has imposed a nighttime curfew on its 25 million people starting Tuesday evening, a day after India recorded a record number of new cases of the coronavirus.
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For the first time, this figure has exceeded 100,000 in 24 hours.
The Indian capital government estimated that the “sudden rise (in the number) of COVID-19 cases” and “the high rate of positivity” made it necessary to have a nighttime curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. until the end of April.
Only people providing services deemed essential or those going to vaccination centers will be allowed to circulate in the streets in the meantime.
Delhi recorded 3,548 new cases on Monday, which is well below the peak of nearly 9,000 that was reached in November. It was at that time the city most affected by the epidemic in India, a country of 1.3 billion people.
Tuesday evening, after the curfew came into effect in the capital, stores closed and street vendors suspended their activities, but car traffic continued on some axes.
Residents of New Delhi have for their part expressed their doubts about the effectiveness of this measure.
“Most people who will catch COVID will catch it during the day, when they are outside,” Arvind Khanna, a 62-year-old financial consultant, told AFP.
“Delhi is one of the most populous cities in the world. There is therefore no effective way (to fight against the coronavirus, editor’s note). People just have to follow the rules, wear a mask, use disinfectant and keep their distance, ”said Angel Miyamoto, an 18-year-old student.
The Indian government has for the moment refused to reimpose a national lockdown, as it had been the case in March 2020, and this in order not to plague the economy.
But the richest state in the country, Maharashtra, which includes Bombay, decided on Sunday to bring the curfew in effect from 8 p.m. to 7 p.m., to enforce a weekend lockdown, not only to close the bars and restaurants, cinemas, swimming pools, places of worship and public places, but also private offices and to prohibit any meeting of more than four people.
Populated by 110 million inhabitants, Maharashtra currently has more than half of the new cases of coronavirus recorded every day on the whole of Indian territory.
India is, behind the United States and Brazil, one of the countries that has recorded the most cases since the start of the pandemic.
Officially, 12.7 million people in India have been infected and 165,000 have perished from COVID-19.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Health announced that 83 million doses of the vaccine had already been administered, as part of an ambitious campaign to vaccinate 300 million people by July.