India's third largest city, Bangaluru, will be on a week-long lockdown after seeing a surge in coronavirus cases that have filled local hospitals and stressed short-staffed health care workers.
Only Bangaluru's essential services like hospitals and grocery stores will be open during the period starting Tuesday.
Government officials say they were caught off guard by the sudden surge in cases. That's created longer wait times for ambulances and a lack of hospital space in the city of about 8.4 million.
India has had issues with crowding in public hospitals because many of the sick can't afford private care. Some patients in the capital city of New Dehli have died after being turned away from COVID-designated hospitals that were packed to capacity.
The country has also been suffering from a shortage of trained medical staff. Officials in Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, are recruiting some 1,700 health care workers to help staff 30,000 new COVID-19 care beds.
India's coronavirus case numbers have been doubling in each of the last three weeks.
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan and three of his family members are among the 850,000 people who have tested positive for the virus in India — third highest in the world after Brazil and the U.S.
