The Biden administration will restrict travel from India starting on Tuesday.
“The policy will be implemented in light of extraordinarily high COVID-19 caseloads and multiple variants circulating in the India,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Friday.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE INDIA CORONAVIRUS VARIANT CAUSING WORRIES
The restriction comes just two days after the State Department issued its highest-level advisory “not to travel to India or to leave as soon as it is safe to do so.” The coronavirus outbreak in India appeared to have stabilized earlier this year before beginning a steady increase in daily cases, believed to be due to new highly transmissible viral mutations. Now, India has the second-highest case count behind the United States, with more than 18.7 million confirmed infections. That total is likely an undercount, given the overtaxed healthcare infrastructure and the number of suspected cases that are not confirmed through testing.
The Indian government counted 386,452 new cases in the last 24 hours, the sharpest increase for any country in a single day since the start of the pandemic. The surge is felt most acutely in two areas — Maharashtra in the west and Delhi in the north. Combined, they account for about 83,700 deaths due to COVID-19 out of a nationwide total of about 208,000.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SENDING INDIA MATERIALS FOR MILLIONS OF ASTRAZENECA VACCINES
Graveyards and crematoria have become overwhelmed, forcing many Indian families to construct funeral pyres wherever there is space outside. Cremation is a key feature of Hindu funeral rites. The country is also experiencing a shrinkage in oxygen and vaccine supplies despite being the world’s largest producer of vaccines.
President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that his administration would send raw materials to manufacture the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as additional oxygen supplies. Senior administration officials added that the U.S. is expected to have roughly 16 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine within the next couple of months that could be sent to other countries, provided that the vaccine passes a safety review by the Food and Drug Administration. The administration did not elaborate on which countries would get these doses first.
