Mumbai: A 64-year-old man – who had contracted coronavirus infection – has died in Maharashtra, the state that has reported maximum cases of the highly contagious illness in India. This is the third death in the country linked to coronavirus or COVID-19, declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation last week.
He was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai.
The death in Maharashtra comes as number of COVID-19 cases rose to 126 in India. Last week, two people – a 68-year-old woman in Delhi and a 76-year-old man in Karnataka – had died. Both the deaths were linked to COVID-19, which originated in China’s Wuhan city at a meat market in December.
Amid widespread scare, the centre on Monday declared a countrywide lockdown of schools, colleges, gyms and swimming pools – crowded areas that could allow for exponential spread of the virus.
After a meeting of a Group of Ministers which reviewed the situation on Monday, the government also advised that people avoid non-essential travel and employees of private companies work from home. The government had last week declared the novel coronavirus outbreak in the country a “notified disaster”, in a move it called “a special one-time dispensation”.
