Migrants stranded in the buffer zone of Bapu Dham Colony, Sector 26, a Covid-19 hotspot, are being evacuated and sent to their native states over the last two days. As many as 817 migrants of UP, Bihar, Jammu and UT Kashmir have been sent back to their natives places since May 26. The development came after residents highlighted what they called glaring gaps in the steps taken by the Chandigarh administration to tackle the Covid-19 outbreak in the colony.

A 24-year-old undertrial in a case of attempt to murder, who came out of Yerawada Prison in Pune as part of the ongoing decongestion of jails due to COVID-19, was hacked to death within an hour after his release as a fallout of past enmity. This is the second such murder of an inmate upon emergency release in the city. Nitin Shivaji Kasabe (24), who was facing a trial in case of an attempt to murder, came out from Yerawada Central Prison at 9.30 pm on Wednesday on temporary bail and was attacked with sharp weapons by a group of at least eight persons, in Yerawada area around 10.30 pm.

Delhi, which reported 792 new infections on Wednesday, its highest single-day rise so far, has now overtaken Gujarat to reclaim the number three position in the list of states with maximum caseload. Delhi now has 15,257 confirmed infections, while Gujarat, which has been growing at a very slow pace for the last two weeks, has 15,195. Gujarat, however, has many more deaths. So far, 938 people have died in the state due to the disease, while Delhi has seen 303 deaths. Tamil Nadu, which has a slightly higher caseload, has recorded only 133 deaths till now.

Assam, which has seen its infections increase from 170 to 774 in the last one week, is showing a similar trend, growing even faster than Kerala right now. The fastest growing number, however, is not in any state. It is the number of people who are currently classified as ‘unassigned’ to any state. These are the people who have tested positive but are not being owned up by any state right now, mainly because they have been on the move, or have been infected at places other than their usual place of residence. This number is more than 4,000 right now, and growing at a very fast pace. They will eventually be assigned to one or the other state, and it will show up in their numbers. But right now, states are reluctant to own them up, for fear of inflating their numbers.

Top ten states with maximum caseload

Around mid-May, Kerala’s doubling time was well over 100 days. On several days during this period, the state did not report even a single new infection. More than 90 per cent of the infected people had already recovered from the disease. And the state had seen just three deaths, the lowest case-fatality ratio among states with significant caseloads.

An increase of more than 300 infections of novel Coronavirus in last one week has ensured that Kerala is now growing at a rate faster than the national average. Kerala had been extremely successful in containing the spread of the disease till about the middle of this month, but a fresh wave of infections triggered by incoming travellers from within the country, and abroad, has seen the numbers go up rapidly.

In the last one week, the total number of confirmed infections in the state has gone up from 666 to 1,003. It means the current doubling time for the state (calculated on seven day compounded growth rate) is just below 12 days. The national doubling time of total infections right now is 14 days.

At least nine passengers on board Shramik Special trains to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were found dead in the last 48 hours, officials and relatives of the deceased said on Wednesday. Five people died during their journey home to UP, and four died on way to Bihar. A tenth person, Shobhan Kumar, 28, from Janakpur in Nepal, who had reached UP’s Ballia on a Madgaon-Darbangha train Tuesday evening and was admitted to the district hospital after falling ill during journey, died on Wednesday, Additional SP, Ballia, Sanjay Yadav said.

Leaving the ruling BJP red-faced in Himachal Pradesh, the party’s state president, Dr Rajeev Bindal, resigned from the postWednesday, “on the basis of high moral grounds”, amid a corruption probe into the procurement of medical supplies by the government for the Covid pandemic.

Bindal, 65, was Speaker of the State Assembly until January, when he was picked by BJP national president J P Nadda to head the party in the state. His resignation comes a week after the vigilance and anti-corruption bureau arrested the director of health services, Dr A K Gupta, following a probe into an audio clip in which two men are purportedly heard discussing the handover of Rs 5 lakh.

With India reporting 6,566 coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, the total tally in the country reached 1,58,333 on Thursday including 4,531 deaths and the 67,691 people who have been treated and discharged so far.

The US has surpassed a jarring milestone in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 deaths. That number is the best estimate and most assuredly an undercount. But it represents the stark reality that more Americans have died from the virus than from the Vietnam and Korea wars combined. “It is a grim milestone,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy with the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington. “It’s a striking reminder of how dangerous this virus can be.” Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 5.6 million people and killed over 350,000, with the US having the most confirmed cases and deaths by far, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

THESE ARE some of the “general practices” in the 37-page “new working protocol” suggested by the Producers Guild of India, to be implemented when the entertainment industry resumes shooting. This document, released two days after a video conference of some of the stakeholders with Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday, suggests steps to be adopted for contagion prevention during shoots.

* Each crew member must wear a triple-layer medical mask and gloves during the entire shoot.]

* Avoid handshakes, hugs, kisses and other physical greetings.

* Sharing of cigarettes should be stopped on sets/ offices/ studios.

* 2-metre distance between colleagues must be maintained.

* Avoid crew and cast members over 60 years of age for at least three months.

Loss of the sense of smell (and taste), one of the more recently identified symptoms of Covid-19, is now recognised as such by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the health authorities of some countries, including the US. A new study in mice has sought to explore why this symptom appears in some Covid-19 patients. They have reported their findings in the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Kabir Firaque explains why do some Covid-19 patients lose their sense of smell.

“Once the train crosses into Telangana, KCR (Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao) will give us beer and biryani,” said a migrant labourer sitting next to me on the Surat-Warangal Shramik Special train. I laughed, others laughed too. It was funny, the way he said it. By then, it had been around 14 hours since we set off from Udhna station near Surat, and most of us had barely eaten. The thought of home, biryani and beer lifted our spirits briefly.

I am from Hyderabad and have been studying Political Science at Central University of Gujarat in Gandhinagar. When the lockdown happened, our campus shut down and most people left, except for some of us in hostels. Meals were always a problem as the canteen was closed. Finally, three of us from Telangana — a batchmate, a PhD student and I — decided to leave. Read the full story here

A construction worker, who lost his job in Hyderabad due to the lockdown, allegedly poured kerosene on his bedridden mother and set her on fire while she was asleep at her house in the early hours of Wednesday, police said. Tirumala Lingaswami (45), from Nalgonda’s Narsingbatla village, 120 km from Hyderabad, allegedly told his sisters that he was not in a position to take care of her anymore, police said. He allegedly fled the spot after the incident and police are looking for him.

As a share, the number of Covid patients needing treatment may still be low but the concern is a growing one — paying private hospital bills amid looming economic distress and uncertainty over course of treatment. As of last week, less than 15 per cent of active Covid cases required hospitalisation. Of those in hospital, just 2.25 per cent needed admission in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU); 1.91 per cent required oxygen, and just 0.004 per cent required ventilatory support. But these numbers will rise as the case load moves up and in cities, especially hotspots, more patients knock on doors of private hospitals. Read More

Four staff members working on the sixth floor of the New Delhi Municipal Council’s (NDMC) Palika Kendra centre at Parliament Street have tested positive for Covid-19. On the fifth floor, a senior official, in his late 40s, in the estates department also tested positive for the virus on Wednesday. A total of seven staffers have contracted the virus so far. A 61-year-old doctor working at the Palika dispensary tested positive last Friday and a 56-year-old civil engineer in April. Among the new cases are a 32-year-old senior accounts assistant, a peon working in the computer billing section, and two personal assistants to two accounts officers. The sixth floor of the Palika Kendra centre was sealed Wednesday, with officials saying it will be sanitised over the next two days. A decision on the sealing of the fifth floor will be taken on Thursday, an NDMC spokesperson said.

Even as most states have strict quarantine and testing norms for passengers arriving by domestic flights, some like Delhi, Goa, etc had comparatively easier standard operating procedures (SOPs). But now with some passengers testing positive for coronavirus upon arrival, a further clampdown of stance by the states on free movement of air passengers could be on the cards. Goa has already moved to compulsorily test all arriving passengers, unless they were able to produce a negative test-certificate. As of early Thursday, as many as four passengers, at least two of which were asymptomatic, had tested positive upon arrival. All four of these travelled on the first day of resumption of flight operations. Tuesday, India’s largest airline IndiGo reported a 24-year old person on its Monday flight from Chennai to Coimbatore tested positive. Another passenger, a 50-year old, on board an Alliance Air flight from Delhi to Ludhiana was also found positive on Tuesday. On Wednesday, two passengers who flew to Guwahati from Ahmedabad on SpiceJet flights also reported positive for the virus upon arrival.

Former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Wednesday alleged that Maharashtra would have been saved to a large extent from the Covid-19 crisis it currently faces, had ministers representing ruling allies Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena sat together in the last three months and discussed the problems of the people. Read more here