The Struggle Continues as India’s Coronavirus Cases Surpass 1 Million

In Bihar, an eastern state with a population of 128 million and a fragile health system, a two-week lockdown was announced Thursday.

In Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state with more than 200 million people, authorities have started placing residents under strict weekend curfews, which will remain in place until the end of the month.

Other local governments are increasingly focusing on smaller lockdowns that shield the economy.

Nearly a dozen states have imposed restrictions on “containment zones” — areas that can be as small as a few houses or a street.

Dr. Anant Bhan, a global health researcher, said that India was likely to see “a series of peaks,” as the infection spread in rural areas.

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He pointed out that the capital of New Delhi and the financial capital, Mumbai, had already seen surges, while infections have now shifted to smaller cities.

India’s response to the virus was initially sluggish.

Then it bought time by locking down its entire population of 1.4 billion people when Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown for three weeks on March 24.

“If (the) situation is not handled in these 21 days, the country and your family could go back 21 years,” Modi said then in a televised address to Indians, many of whom were still unaware of the scale of the crisis in the country.

The nationwide lockdown, then extended for five more weeks, came at an enormous economic cost amid an unprecedented humanitarian crisis when millions of impoverished migrant workers were forced to return to the countryside due to job losses and hunger.

Aimed at increasing the capacity of the health care system, the lockdown slowed down the virus, but it wasn't enough.

Cases kept increasing while testing still remained abysmally low and the virus rocketed through India’s vast landscape — from high up in the Himalayan Kashmir to the sprawling beaches of Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.

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“Slowdown isn’t eradication,” said Jayaprakash Muliyil, an epidemiologist at the Christian Medical College in Vellore.