Very Clear We’re Not Going In For Lockdowns In Big Way: Nirmala Sitharaman

Mumbai: In wake of rising in coronavirus cases in India, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday made it clear that the government would not go for lockdowns in a big way and only resort to local containment.

While addressing in a virtual meeting with World Bank Group president David Malpass Sitharaman appreciated the initiatives of the World Bank to increase the lending space for India to enhance the availability of finance for development.

“Finance Minister @nsitharaman shared the measures being taken by India to contain the spread of the second wave of pandemic including the five pillared strategies of test-track-treat-vaccination and COVID19 appropriate behaviour,” the finance ministry said in a tweet.

https://twitter.com/FinMinIndia/status/1381968640728125442?s=20

She said, “Even with the second wave, we are very clear that we are not going in for lockdowns in a big way. We don’t want to totally arrest the economy,” she said, adding the industry owners have been speaking with both the state and the central governments.

While talking about the local containment strategy, the Union Minister said, “Local-level isolation of patients of households that have people in quarantine are the methods through which the crisis will be handled, the second wave will be handled.”

Meanwhile, with the latest health ministry data, 1,61,736 new coronavirus infections have been reported in a day pushing India’s total caseload to 1,36,89,453, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate has dropped further to 89.51 per cent.

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