Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged people to avoid \u201cnon-essential travel\u201d in view of the Coronavirus or COVID-19 outbreak and said that ministers of the Central government have been directed to not travel abroad in the coming days. He asked people to take precautions and not to panic.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay No to Panic, Say Yes to Precautions. No Minister of the Central Government will travel abroad in the upcoming days. I urge our countrymen to also avoid non-essential travel. We can break the chain of spread and ensure safety of all by avoiding large gatherings\u201d PM Modi tweeted.<\/p>\n
He also assured that all preventive and precautionary measures have been taken to ensure safety. PM Modi wrote that\u00a0\u201cThe Government is fully vigilant about the situation due to COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus. Across ministries & states, multiple steps have been proactively taken to ensure safety of all. These steps are wide-ranging, from suspension of Visas to augmenting healthcare capacities.\u201d
\nHis tweets came after a press meeting by Union Health Ministry. At the meeting, it was said that the popular belief that COVID-19 virus will not survive Indian summers is unverified. The nature of the virus is still under study, joint secretary of Health Ministry Luv Aggarwal said. Union External Affairs minister S Jaishankar on Thursday said that \u201cexceptional situations require exceptional responses\u201d, adding that the current situation in the country is a \u201cmatter of concern\u201d.\u00a0The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday night announced the suspension of all foreign visas to India from March 13 at 12:00 GMT, which will be in place till April 15.<\/p>\n
So far, 73 persons have tested positive for COVID-19 out of whom 56 are Indians and 17 are foreign nationals.<\/p>\n
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The government is vigilant about the situation, the PM said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":8642,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[246,346,92,32,354],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation","8":"tag-coronavirus-in-india","9":"tag-coronavirus-in-kolkata","10":"tag-narendra-modi","11":"tag-national-news","12":"tag-s-jaishankar"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8846"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=8846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}