Haryana govt imposes week-long lockdown

CHANDIGARH: Haryana home and health minister Anil Vij announced on Sunday that the state will go into complete lockdown for a week amid sharp spike in coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases in the state.

“From May 3, Monday, the entire state of Haryana will be under complete lockdown for seven days,” health minister Vij said in a tweet in Hindi.

Haryana on Saturday registered its biggest single-day jump in Covid-related deaths as the state recorded 125 deaths which took the toll to 4,341, while 13,588 fresh cases pushed the infection count to 501,566.

The number of active cases in the state crossed the 100,000mark for the first time since the pandemic began on Saturday. The state currently has 102,516 active Covid-19 cases and the hardest-hit cities Gurugram and Faridabad account for 50% of the cases, according to the state’s health bulletin.

Several districts in the state are already under a weekend lockdown which started from 10pm on Friday and will end on 5am on Monday. The weekend lockdown was announced by the state government in nine districts across the state on Friday, which include, Gurugram, Panchkula, Faridabad, Sonipat, Rohtak, Karnal, Hisar, Sirsa, and Fatehabad.

“Whereas, the Covid-19 pandemic is again posing threat to public health, the Haryana government has considered it necessary to take effective measures to prevent its spread in the state,” the order announcing the weekend lockdown said.

India reported 392,488 new Covid-19 on Sunday and a record 3,689 related fatalities which pushed the infection count to 19,557,457 and the death toll to 215,542, respectively.

With this, the active cases in the country crossed the 3.3 million mark as the country as they increase to 3,349,644.