India confirms eighth death due to coronavirus

New Delhi: India said on Monday it will shut down domestic flights to halt the spread of coronavirus and confirmed its eighth death from COVID-19.

India has reported 415 cases of the coronavirus but health experts have warned that a big jump could be imminent, which would overwhelm the public health infrastructure.

On Monday, India confirmed its eighth death - of a 54-year-old man with no history of foreign travel, officials said.

The man, on ventilator support at the ICCU of the AAMRI Hospital in Kolkata, died following a cardiac arrest. Hospitalised with fever, cold and cough last week, his condition started deteriorating on Sunday night.

The resident of Dum Dum in Kolkata’s northern suburb was detected with the infection on Saturday evening after reports from two testing facilities - SSKM and NICED - turned positive.

According to sources, some family members of the man are in hospital, and few others in home isolation.

He didn’t have any recent foreign travel history, but attended a marriage in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, last month. He returned by the Pune-Howrah Azad Hind Express, early this month.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee learnt of the death during an all-party meeting on coronavirus at the state secretariat Nabanna. She instructed the police to ensure that the disease didn’t spread from the body and the last rites were performed as per the advice of doctors.

Six more coronavirus patients are admitted at the special isolation ward of the ID Hospital Beliaghata, the state’s primary referral hospital for infectious diseases. They include three members of a family - an elderly couple and their 22-year-old son - and the housemaid.

The youth had returned from the United Kingdom recently.

A girl who came back from Scotland and a teenager who studies in the UK have also been afflicted with the disease.

Offices shut

Streets were deserted in the national capital Delhi and offices shut at the start of a lockdown to run till the end of the month.

The government ordered commercial airlines to shut down domestic operations from midnight on Tuesday on top of a ban on international flights to try and contain the coronavirus. About 144 million people travelled on domestic flights last year.

Rail travel, the lifeline of India, has already been suspended after thousands of people, mostly migrant workers, swarmed train stations to go home as businesses shut down and jobs dried up.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said many Indians were not taking the lockdown seriously. “Please save yourself, save your family, follow the instructions seriously,” he said on Twitter.

The chief minister of the western state of Maharashtra, which has had the highest number of cases in India, ordered a curfew from Tuesday to force people indoors.

“Despite multiple requests, people are not following rules.

This compelled the government to impose the curfew,” Uddhav Thackeray said.

The country’s main stock exchange located in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, will however remain open, an official said.

Newspapers cancelled print runs in Mumbai after vendors refused to distribute them due to worries about the coronavirus, which emerged in China late last year and has spread around the world.

Globally, cases exceed 325,000 with deaths topping 14,000.