India has reported 86,821 new coronaviruses cases and another 1,181 deaths, making September its worst month of the pandemic.
The Health Ministry's update for the past 24 hours raised India's total to more than 6.3 million people infected and 98,678 dead from Covid-19. India added 41% of its confirmed cases and 34% of fatalities in September alone.
India is expected to become the pandemic's worst-hit country within weeks, surpassing the United States, where more than 7.2 million people have been infected.
The government announced further easing of restrictions to start October 15. Cinemas, theatres and multiplexes can open with up to 50% of seating capacity, and swimming pools can also be used by athletes in training.
The government also said India's 28 states can decide on reopening of schools and coaching institutions gradually after October 15. However, the students will have the option of attending online classes.
International commercial flights will remain suspended until October 31. However, evacuation flights will continue to and from the United States, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and several other countries.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed the world's stringent lockdown across the country late in March, but started easing restrictions after two months to revive the severely-hit economy that contracted by an unprecedented 24% in the April-June quarter.
The lockdown cost more than 10 million impoverished migrant workers their jobs in the cities.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here