Nagpur: Indian city becomes first to go back into Covid lockdown

The lockdown will begin on March 15

Nagpur in Western India’s Maharashtra announces week-long lockdown (Getty Images )

Amid concern over the number of rising coronavirus cases, authorities in Nagpur, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, are putting the city under complete lockdown for a week from March 15.

It means Nagpur will become the first Indian city to go back into lockdown after recording more than 2,000 cases in the last 24 hours, reports said.

Maharashtra has long been a Covid hotspot. To date, there have been 11,308,846 cases across the country with 158,306 deaths.

This step has prompted other districts to take preventive measures in the wake of rising cases. Authorities in Pune, another district in Maharashtra, have directed schools and colleges to remain shut until March 31. Given the rising numbers in the district, hotels are restaurants shall be restricted to working curtailed hours too.

Uddhav Thackeray, the Maharashtra chief minister, confirmed the lockdown might be extended to other cities as well.

Experts believe that the sharp rise in infection numbers across Nagpur could be due to a new variant of the virus. This isn’t the first time a regionn in Maharashtra has imposed a fresh lockdown. In February, the Amravati district in Maharashtra was also put under a weeklong lockdown.

Maharashtra accounted for almost 60 per cent of the daily new cases on Thursday, government data showed

So far, across the country, more than 20 million people have received their first shot of the COVID vaccine. India started the vaccination drive in January.