India's virus lockdown eased while infection rate speeds up

NEW DELHI (AP) — India relaxed some coronavirus lockdown restrictions on Monday even as the pace of infection picked up and reopenings drew crowds of people.

The near-total 5-week lockdown on India's 1.3 billion population achieved a slowdown in the spread of the virus but has caused immense hardship for India’s legions of poor people, who could neither stay in cities without work nor travel to their home villages and waited in line daily for hot meals. Some degree of lockdown will continue at least until May 18.

A tentative return to normal life, albeit with masks, social distancing and stringent hygiene standards, resumed in low-risk areas with few or no cases, while constraints on movement and work continued elsewhere in the country. In New Delhi, a designated hot spot where many lockdown restrictions remained, construction workers, Uber drivers and self-employed people such as housekeepers returned to work.

During the lockdown, only businesses deemed essential, such as grocery stores, banks and pharmacies, were open. The sale of alcohol was banned. But on Monday, a broader array of business was permitted. More than 100 people, not all observing social distancing norms, stood in line to enter a liquor store.

At another liquor store in Old Delhi, a usually highly congested area around the Mughal-era Red Fort, about 200 would-be shoppers pushed and shoved each other to enter. Police wielded their bamboo batons to break up the crowd.

Neeraj Mehta went to a liquor store in East Delhi, but the crowd scared him off. “The government should just keep the liquor shops shut if such crowds are going to gather," he said.

Migrant workers who fled Indian cities en masse when the lockdown took effect March 25, only to become stranded on the road and quarantined by state governments, were traveling by special rail service...