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Boris Johnson cancels trip to India due to coronavirus worries
Johnson had already postponed the trip once from January, when COVID-19 infections were high in Britain. Infections in India are currently surging as the country endures a second wave of the virus.
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Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits the Tollgate Medical Centre in Beckton, London, Britain July 24, 2020. (Pool/Reuters/Jeremy Selwyn)
B
ritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday cancelled a planned trip to India, scheduled to take place next week, due to the current coronavirus situation in India, Johnson's office said.
Johnson had already postponed the trip once from January, when COVID-19 infections were high in Britain. Infections in India are currently surging as the country endures a second wave of the virus.
"In the light of the current coronavirus situation, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be able to travel to India next week," a joint statement from the British and Indian government, released by Johnson's office, said, as quoted by Reuters.
"Instead, Prime Ministers Modi and Johnson will speak later this month to agree and launch their ambitious plans for the future partnership between the UK and India."
Relations with India are seen as a key component of both Britain's post-Brexit ambitions to reinvigorate trade with countries outside the European Union, and a diplomatic push to gain more influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
Britain has invited India to attend the G7 summit it is hosting in June.
British health officials said on Sunday they were investigating a COVID-19 variant originating in India, but as yet they did not have enough evidence to classify it is as a variant of concern.
Starting Monday night, India will lock down its capital New Delhi for a week to try and control a raging coronavirus outbreak, as the hard-hit United States passed a hopeful milestone of giving at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose to half its adults.
Infections are skyrocketing in India, however, with hospitals running out of beds and the government forced to reimpose economically painful restrictions again.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the capital's "health system is at a tipping point".
"If we don't impose a lockdown now, we will be looking at a bigger disaster," he was quoted by AFP.
Kejriwal said businesses would be shut and movement around the city of 20 million limited to essential services.
The Delhi lockdown came after the vast nation of 1.3 billion people reported a record high of 273,810 infections on Monday -- the fifth consecutive day of more than 200,000 cases.
The restrictions followed similar measures in other parts of India, including in the western state of Maharashtra, home to financial capital Mumbai.
The surge has overwhelmed the healthcare infrastructure in many parts of India, and authorities are scrambling to free up hospital beds and secure additional supplies of oxygen and treatment drugs.
India has the world's second-highest caseload with more than 15 million known infections.
Health workers are bracing for yet another spike as millions of pilgrims attend a religious festival and ongoing regional elections draw huge rallies.
