Amid mounting worries about a deep recession due to the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing lockdown, authorities on Wednesday announced plans to resume domestic flights from next week and also asked the entertainment industry to get ready for limited resumption of film shooting and post-production activities. The nationwide tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the meantime rose by over 5,000 with new cases getting detected across states.
The Union Health Ministry said the recovery rate among those having tested positive has risen to nearly 40 per cent, from about 7 per cent before the lockdown began on March 25. It also said that hospital support was needed by less than 7 per cent patients.
In its morning 8 AM update, the ministry said the COVID-19 death toll has risen to 3,303 after 140 more deaths were reported in the last 24 hours, while the number of cases across the country rose by more than 5,600 to reach 1,06,750.
During a press briefing on the COVID-19 situation, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said the total active COVID-19 cases now stands at 61,149 in the country and 42,298 people have recovered.
The current recovery rate stands at 39.62 per cent while it was 7.1 per cent at the beginning of lockdown, he added.
The nationwide lockdown was initially imposed for a 21-day period till April 14, but later got extended till May 3 in the second phase and then for another 14-day third phase till May 17. A two-week-long fourth phase is now underway till May 31, but with several restrictions having been relaxed to boost economic activities.
Announcing further relaxations, Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday that domestic flights will resume in a calibrated manner from May 25, two months after the services were shut due to the coronavirus.
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The minister, however, did not mention any update for international flights, which have also remained shut during the lockdown, barring for special flights being operated to bring back stranded Indians and expatriates from abroad.
The aviation sector has been among the worst hit by the pandemic as various countries, including India, decided to suspend commercial flights completely to curb the spread of the virus. Several Indian carriers have resorted to pay cuts, layoffs and leave without pay for their staff members.
Similar is the situation for many other sectors, while a huge manpower shortage is looming large due to the return of lakhs of migrant workers to their native places after being rendered jobless, and even homeless in most cases, from most of the industrial clusters across the country where they were working before the lockdown.
Cab aggregator Ola is laying off 1,400 staff as its revenue declined by 95 per cent in the last two months due to the coronavirus pandemic, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said in an email to employees.
Rating agency Icra warned of a deep recession and drastically lowered its FY21 GDP forecast for Indian economy to a contraction of 5 per cent, citing the very modest fiscal support, extension of the nationwide lockdown and the looming labour shortage.
The agency also sharply revised downwards its estimates for the first two quarters of the fiscal, forecasting 25 per cent GDP contraction in the current April-June quarter and a contraction of 2.1 per cent for the July-September period. Earlier, it had forecast 16-20 per cent contraction for Q1 and a growth of 2.1 per cent for Q2.
With the lockdown being extended to end-May and expectation of substantial delays in getting the supply chains operational following the return of millions of migrant workers to their home states, Q1 de-growth will be deeper and recovery will be shallower and more delayed than our earlier assessment, Icra said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, however, said the industry needs to reset its relations with workers in view of the COVID-19 fallouts and also consider a professional way to engage unskilled workers.
During an interaction with industry body CII, she said, "Mindsets in industry need to set examples in handling workers in a way that is acceptable to all."
In Gujarat, another badly hit state with more than 12,000 cases and over 700 deaths, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani sought people's participation in a week-long online campaign on COVID-19 fight. He said, "Now, it's a direct battle against coronavirus. We have to live with coronavirus and also fight against it."
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