by Krishnan Nayar NEW DELHI, (Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2020) India today announced over 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, even as its comprehensive three-week lockdown entered its fifth day.
At the time of writing, India has recorded 1,045 cases, of which 27 patients have died while 86 persons have recovered. That puts the number of active cases at 932, according to the India COVID-19 Tracker, the country’s most reliable curator of news about coronavirus.
India COVID-19 is a crowd-sourced initiative which collects data nationwide and is updated on its site in real time. It gets information directly from states, which is where COVID-19 cases are being reported.
As the milestone of 1,000 cases was crossed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked for forgiveness from his people for the difficult decisions he had to take, causing them "myriad hardship."
In his customary monthly radio address, Modi said, "I extend a heartfelt apology to all my countrymen. It is possible that many are annoyed with me for their confinement in their homes. I fully understand your situation. I can feel what you are going through. But in order to battle coronavirus in a country of 130-crore (1.3 billion) people such as India, there was no other option [but for] a complete lockdown."
Modi ended his speech on a hopeful note. "We need to win this battle. And we will win. We will meet (via radio) again next month. By then we should have overcome this crisis."
The Prime Minister yesterday had a long video conference with practitioners of India’s traditional medicines or Ayush, Ayurveda, Yoga, Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy. He underlined the importance of fact checking and countering unsubstantiated claims of Ayush having cures for COVID-19.
