Some 100,000 people were evacuated from low-lying areas in Maharashtra and neighbouring Gujarat, according to the Press Trust of India news agency. Both states, already among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, activated disaster response teams, fearing extensive flooding could further impair overwhelmed health systems.
This Tuesday, June 2, 2020, satellite image released by NASA shows cyclone Nisarga roaring toward the western coast of India. Credit:NASA
“If hospitals and clinics are damaged by the cyclone, the city won’t be able to cope with the large number of COVID-19 cases, and social distancing measures will become virtually impossible to follow,” Bidisha Pillai, chief executive of Save the Children in India, said in a statement.
“Let us fight this danger like we are standing up to the corona pandemic and are on our way to defeat it. Likewise, we will prevail over this situation too!” Maharashtra’s top official, Chief Minister Uddhav Balasheb Thackeray, tweeted.
The cyclone also threatened to worsen prospects for an economic turnaround as a nine-week-long government-imposed coronavirus lockdown began to ease this week. India has reported more than 200,000 coronavirus cases and 5,800 deaths.
Some special trains departing from Mumbai that for weeks have carried millions of economic migrants who lost their jobs in lockdown were rescheduled, and newly restored domestic airline travel postponed.
Nisarga comes just two weeks after Cyclone Amphan tore through the Bay of Bengal on India’s east coast and battered West Bengal state, killing more than 100 people in India and neighbouring Bangladesh.
AP