Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das on Sunday said that he has tested positive for Covid-19. He is 63.

“I have tested Covid-19 positive. Asymptomatic. Feeling very much alright. Have alerted those who came in contact in recent days. Will continue to work from isolation. Work in RBI will go on normally. I am in touch with all deputy governors and other officers through video conference and telephone,’’ he said on Twitter.

A growth oriented Das has been doing much of the heavy-lifting of the economy with the pandemic inflicting a record contraction.

Since March this year, the central bank has brought down the policy repo rate by 115 basis points. The RBI has also taken several other steps that includes infusion of liquidity, easing financing conditions an cooling down yields amid a record government borrowing.

Earlier this month, he also indulged in moral suasion.

He said yields of government securities (G-sec) need to evolve in alignment with the comfortable liquidity conditions and that market participants, on their part, need to take a broader time perspective and display bidding behaviour that reflects a sensitivity to the signals from the RBI in the conduct of monetary policy and debt management.

These words were accompanied by other actions which included doubling the size of open market operations (purchase of Government securities) to Rs 20,000 crore, an on-tap targeted long term repo operations TLTRO with tenors of up to three years for a total amount of up to Rs 1,00,000 crore and OMOs in state development loans (SDLs).

While this is for the first time that the RBI was buying state government bonds, all these actions have resulted in bringing down yields on the benchmark 10-year G-sec to below 6 per cent.