India’s first Assembly election since the Covid-19 outbreak began, in Bihar, is coinciding with the US Presidential election which is yet to produce a final result as some key states are still counting votes.
During a rally in Bihar’s Darbhanga, BJP chief JP Nadda on Thursday made a reference to the US election and President Donald Trump. “Results of US elections are being declared and the allegation against Donald Trump is that he could not handle Covid-19 properly, but Modi ji saved the country of 130-crore population by taking timely decision,” he said.
He went on to say that India had just one Covid-testing laboratory the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown, but today there are 1,650 testing labs.
Modi had announced a 21-day national lockdown on 24 March to stem the spread of Covid-19, without prior warning. The lockdown triggered a mass exodus of migrant workers and the government had come under sharp criticism for how it was implemented (see here and here).
A 7 March report says there were at least 52 Covid-19 testing labs across the country at the time.
India had among the harshest lockdowns anywhere in the world for more than three months, but experts are divided over how effective it was in containing spread of the infectious disease.
Until Thursday, India has reported 124,315 Covid-19 deaths and is only behind the US in the number of cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. While India, with a population of 1.4 billion, has reported 8.36 million cases so far, the US which has around 300 million people, has 9.45 million cases. Unlike Trump, Modi has never downplayed the severity of the disease, but his administration has received severe criticism from home and abroad over its handling of the crisis.
India reported 50,210 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, according to an update from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Several Twitter users were baffled at Nadda’s statement and pointed him to the number of cases in India: