India's Covid calamity: It should consider a hard national lockdown

AMID a massive spike in Covid-19 cases in India, the Indian government has continued to resist calls by its pandemic taskforce for a nationwide lockdown to break the virus transmission.

Instead, states and union territories have been told by the government to take stringent measures and implement customised lockdowns to deal with the escalating crisis and curb the virus spread. About 10 states and union territories have implemented some form of restrictions.

Clearly, this is not enough. India reported close to 400,000 daily new Covid-19 cases in recent days across the country. Its total Covid caseload stands at some 20.3million. Fatalities have surged beyond 222,000, though medical experts say the actual numbers across the country of 1.4 billion may be five to 10 times higher than the official tally.