(Image source from: business-standard.com)

Entering the lockdown 2.0, while India was planning on implementing several relaxations on the lockdown measures, the country witnessed the highest spike in the confirmed cases in the past 24 hours.

India reported 1,553 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, taking the total tally of the confirmed cases in the country above 17,000. The death toll due to Covid-19 currently stands at 543.

The officials have reported that the country has tested over 4 lakh samples already.

Union Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan stated saying, “The doubling rate of Covid-19 cases has increased from three days before imposition of lockdown in March to 9.7 days now.”

Out of all the infected people, over 2000 people have recovered already. Kerala is the only state in the country which has reported more recoveries than the active cases now with just 2 casualties till now. They have been proactively working to flatten the curve effectively.

At present, 14, 175 active cases of the novel coronavirus are still there in the country.

Maharashtra is the worst hit state reporting over 4200 cases till now followed by Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Telangana. These are some of the hotspot areas in the country.

Aside from that, PM Narendra Modi informed that there might be relaxations in the lockdown restrictions from April 20, 2020 in the low infected areas. There are likely going to be more lenience in the work and the movement of the people but the same is going to be informed accordingly.

The country has also been divided into red zones, green zones and orange zones, which are the markers on how the country might reopen its economy based on the cases reported.

By Somapika Dutta