Minister: Indian gov't has no plan for countrywide lockdown amid spike in COVID-19 cases

NEW DELHI, April 14 (Xinhua) -- India's federal finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the Indian government has no plan to impose a nationwide lockdown amid the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in the Asian country.

Sitharaman said that the federal government does not want to totally arrest the economy and the second wave of COVID-19 in the country will be handled through isolation and quarantine methods at the local level.

"With the second wave, we are very clear we are not going in for a lockdown in a big way. We don't want to totally arrest the economy. The local level isolation of patients and keeping people in quarantine are methods through which the crisis of the second wave will be handled," she said during a virtual interaction with World Bank Group President David Malpass on Tuesday evening.

Sitharaman also shared with Malpass the measures being taken by the Indian government to contain the spread of the pandemic including the five pillared strategy of testing, tracking, treating, vaccination and COVID-19 appropriate behavior.

During the meeting, they discussed various issues including COVID-19 vaccination, economic recovery, World Bank Group lending envelope for India and India's strategy of green, resilient and inclusive development.

India is witnessing a spike in COVID-19 cases.

The federal health ministry on Wednesday morning said that 184,372 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, a record single-day spike since the start of the pandemic, and 1,027 new deaths from the coronavirus epidemic were recorded in the past 24 hours in India.