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Covid-19 in India: Mumbai to release new guidelines to tackle surge in cases

Despite rising infections, health officials have ruled out a lockdown

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Mumbai's civic body will release new guidelines to tackle the surge in Covid-19 cases in the Indian city.

But despite rising infections, the civic body has no plans to impose a lockdown, municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal told a news agency on Thursday.

Mayor Kishori Pednekar also said there would be no lockdown, through restrictions will continue to be imposed in the metropolis.On Thursday, Mumbai logged over 20,000 new Covid cases, a sharp, 25 per cent surge over the previous day’s figure.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair a review meeting through video conferencing with Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray later on Friday on the growing number of Covid cases in the city.

Dr Shashank Joshi, the state’s Covid taskforce member, urged residents to stay at home if they did not have essential work. In a tweet, he urged residents to "be vigilant, be alert and stay safe."

Maharashtra’s health minister Rajesh Tope said that 90 per cent of the new cases are asymptomatic and of the remaining, just one to two per cent require hospitalisation.

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Ruling out the imposition of a lockdown, the minister said: “The Task Force has used the term augmented restrictions, which means if the cases rise like this...we don't have to use the term lockdown. A 100 per cent lockdown is not certainly required.”

The government has also ruled out shutting down local trains that continue to operate, carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers daily.

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