Poor given aid as India gambles on lockdown

important social distancing measures are. Scientists say stopping just one person from getting the virus means scores of others will not become infected down the road.

European Union leaders are convening for their third summit in three weeks as they battle to contain the spread of coronavirus and manage the havoc the disease is wreaking on their 27 economies.

As the number of deaths in Europe soared over 12,000, Spain prolonged a state of emergency that will allow it to impose broader lockdowns while French president Emmanuel Macron launched “Operation Resilience”, a military-backed response to combat the pandemic.

France began evacuating infected citizens from the hotspot of Alsace using a special high-speed train.

Some of India’s legions of poor and others thrown out of work by a nationwide stayat-home order began receiving aid yesterday as both public and private groups worked to blunt the impact of efforts to curb the Covid-19 pandemic.

India’s finance ministry announced a 1.7 trillion rupee (£19 billion) economic stimulus package that will include delivering grains and lentil rations for three months to 800 million people – some 60 per cent of the world’s secondmost populous country.

One state’s government deposited cash into the bank accounts of newly unemployed workers. Aid groups worked to greatly expand the number of meals they could hand out.

The unprecedented order keeping India’s 1.3 billion people at home for all but essential trips is meant to keep the virus from surging above the 593 active cases and 13 deaths recorded and overwhelming an already strained health care system. The measures that went into effect Wednesday – the largest of their kind in the world – risk heaping further hardship on the quarter of the population who live below the poverty line.