Indian state announces fresh curbs as Covid cases climb

The Indian state of Maharashtra, home to financial capital Mumbai and more than 100m people, introduced restrictions including a weekend lockdown as the country’s daily Covid-19 caseload approached a record high.

India reported 93,000 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, registering the highest number of daily infections globally. It is fast approaching its previous peak of nearly 100,000 daily cases in September.

The country recorded more than 500 deaths on Saturday, up from 100 or less at the start of March.

Maharashtra has led the resurgence with more than 57,000 new infections on Sunday, and has accounted for many of the deaths. The western state is India’s economic powerhouse, accounting for 14 per cent of gross domestic product, according to research firm Capital Economics.

The restrictions in Maharashtra, which include extending an existing night curfew, bar most non-essential activities in the evenings and at weekends, as well as requiring businesses like cinemas and shopping malls to close to visitors.

The state stopped short of a full lockdown — which analysts fear could have ruinous economic implications — but has not ruled out further measures amid fears that health systems could be overwhelmed by the surge.

India’s second wave risks setting back the budding recovery of what had been one of the world’s fastest-growing large economies before the pandemic.

The Reserve Bank of India expects India’s economy to grow by 10.5 per cent in the 12 months to March 2022 after a painful contraction the previous year. 

But the surge is a “growing threat”, according to Capital Economics. Writing before the latest announcement, the firm said wide-ranging restrictions “would severely dent the economic recovery”.

Nomura estimates that a worsening second wave will weigh on growth, though it expects the impact of localised measures to be limited compared to last year’s strict nationwide lockdown.

The second wave in India, a major vaccine exporter, also has potentially global ramifications for Covid-19 vaccine supplies.

Officials in India said last month they were “calibrating” how much supply would be available for export, and were buying up much of domestic production as they look to speed up inoculations at home.

India, which had been exporting more doses than it was giving domestically, this month opened vaccinations to anyone aged over 45.

A sharp nationwide drop in Covid-19 infections between September and February, when India recorded as few as 10,000 new cases a day, allowed authorities around the country to lift the bulk of remaining lockdown restrictions.

But the speed with which the new wave has risen has alarmed health experts concerned about the presence of new strains of the virus in the country. Authorities have confirmed detection of the variants “of concern” first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil.

Health officials also last month announced the discovery of a new “double mutant” variant in Maharashtra, though they cautioned that it was premature to attribute the surge to the presence of new strains.