Social Workers in India’s Capital Raise Concerns as COVID-19 Shutdown Sparks Massive Exodus

Indian migrant workers, daily wagers, laborers, and homeless people wait for food outside a government-run shelter as a nationwide lockdown continues in an attempt to stop the spread of the CCP virus in New Delhi, India, on March 28, 2020. Yawar Nazir/Getty Images

A week after India imposed a three-week nationwide lockdown to control the CCP virus outbreak, community workers are worried about the migrant labor class stranded on the capital’s border, saying that hunger and chaos may kill more people than the infection.

The second-most-populous country of 1.3 billion people had 1,024 confirmed cases of infection and 27 deaths as of March 29.