Largest lockdown in India as US agrees $2tn deal

INDIA’S POPULATION of 1.3bn people has been ordered to stay at home under the world’s biggest lockdown in a bid to stop the coronavirus pandemic.

The unprecedented move was aimed at keeping the virus from spreading and overwhelming India’s fragile healthcare system as it has done in parts of Europe, where infections are still surging. New York has scrambled to set up thousands of new hospital beds.

Financial markets continued their wild swings, with Asian benchmarks gaining on Wednesday after Wall Street posted its best day since 1933 in anticipation of the two trillion dollar (£1.7 trillion) economic rescue package agreed by the White House and US congress.

The deal would give direct payments to most Americans, expand unemployment benefits and provide a 367 billion dollar (£313 billion) programme for small businesses to keep making payroll.

In India, everything but essential services like supermarkets were closed. The country has had around 450 cases of the virus, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned that if he did not act now it could set the country back decades.

With infections in the US exceeding 55,000, including more than 690 deaths, public health experts have warned that failing to maintain social distancing would cause a big increase in infections to the point the healthcare system would be overwhelmed and many more people would die.

Yet in Washington, President Donald Trump said he hoped to reopen the country in less than three weeks.

He said: “I would love to have

the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”

More than 423,000 people worldwide have been infected by the virus and nearly 19,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.

A recent flicker of hope for Italy, which has seen the most deaths in the world, faded with an increase in both new cases and fatalities, while Spanish authorities were forced to take control of an ice rink to store bodies.

In New Zealand, the government declared an emergency before an unprecedented four-week lockdown began last night.

However in Brazil, which has seen about 2,200 cases, President Jair Bolsonaro took a different approach, sticking with his contention that virus concerns were overblown.

He said: “Our lives have to continue, jobs should be maintained.”