India locks down capital to battle virus

India will lock down its capital New Delhi for a week from Monday night to try and control a raging coronavirus outbreak.

India is still facing skyrocketing infections, with hospitals running out of beds and the government forced to reimpose economically painful restrictions again.

The capital New Delhi braced for a fresh lockdown as officials scrambled to get surging cases under control.

"Delhi's health system is at a tipping point. The Covid-19 situation is pretty critical," Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said.

"If we don't impose a lockdown now, we will be looking at a bigger disaster."

The Delhi lockdown came after the vast nation of 1.3 billion people reported a record high of 273,810 infections on Monday -- the fifth consecutive day of more than 200,000 cases.

India has the world's second-highest caseload with more than 15 million known infections.

The government said Monday it would make Covid vaccines available to all adults in the country from May 1, in a bid to beat back infections.

The soaring cases forced UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to cancel a planned visit to the country this month, and Britain said Monday it would add India to its travel "red list", banning all arrivals from India except for UK or Irish nationals.