Lockdown in Mini India | Britain Gets Unlocked From 4th July

It’s just a few days more, Britain has officially declared the lockdown phase to be over by 3rd July. All the organizations, small companies, educational hubs, restaurants, pubs, shopping malls, theatres will reopen from 4th July in England. Except for Mini India, Leicester City. On 30th June at 9 PM, the government health secretary Matt Hancock declared that due to the COVID-19 outbreak and the gradual increment of Corona cases, the government has decided to keep Leicester City and the surrounding cities in the same lockdown phase, at least for a couple of weeks. (Reference: BBC)

This is for the first time in Britain when there is a local lockdown announced by the government in the nation (Reference: Leicestershire Live). Leicester city along with some other areas of cities such as ODB, Bristol, and Glenfield will be completely under the lockdown state at least for two more weeks (Reference: The Guardian). When the economy was just about to come back to its original phase, at the moment this announcement has spread anxiety among the citizens. The Belgrade Road of Leicester City is known as “Mini India” where a huge number of Indian shops can be seen such as sweet shops, jewelry shops, curio shops, etc. As per the government, all the non-essential shops must be completely closed from today itself. This announcement will definitely make those Indian shops face losses once again, which has made a part of Gujarati residents of that place start talking against the government.

The government says that following the past ten days COVID-19 tests graph, it is gradually increasing day by day. And due to that, even the schools will also be closed for a few more weeks in the city. They have also warned the city dwellers to stay at home and be safe. Checking the statistics of the next two weeks, they will decide upon what is to be done next. Not only in Leicester City, but in Britain, the number of Indians have got infected by coronavirus the most. It’s assumed that as most of the Indians have high blood pressure and diabetes, they are more prone to this disease. Also, South Asians live in huge populations in small areas. That is the reason the rate of infected cases is more in them. On the other hand, many of the Leicester city residents have objections against Prime Minister Boris Johnson, they say that the government has not helped the South Asians with anything during this pandemic phase. Even Britain’s overall statistics of coronavirus cases are not at all satisfactory. There have been more than 3 million positive cases and more than 40 thousand deaths have already happened in the country.