NEW DELHI - India urged Kerala and Maharashtra to consider night curfews in areas with high COVID-19 cases as the country reported more than 40,000 new infections for two days in a row.
Cases fell quite low in the middle of the month but have risen again. It occurred mainly in Kerala, where people celebrated a big festival in which families typically come together.
The ministry asked the states to "explore the possibility of placing night curfew in areas of high positivity" and ensured the additional supplies of vaccines.
India recently reported increasing new COVID-19 infections, taking 32.6 million, the most in the world after the United States. Deaths rose by 496 to 436,861.
Kerala accounted for nearly 60% of the new cases in the past week and more than half of the total active cases, followed by 16% in the western state of Maharashtra.
(Reporting by Neha Arora, Chris Thomas and Krishna N. Das; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Michael Perry)
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