Coronavirus India LIVE updates: Migrants returning to Kalyanpur village in UP’s Kasganj from Gujarat.
Coronavirus India News Live Updates: With 9,304 cases and 260 deaths in the last 24 hours, the total number of COVID-19 infections in India reached 2,16,919 and the numbers of casualties soared to 6,075 on Thursday. Of the total, 1,04,106 people have been cured and discharged.
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary Ajay Kumar has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been put under home quarantine. Kumar, who was tested after developing a mild fever, is the first top government official to test positive for the disease.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has decided to resume the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) part of its Solidarity Trial, a global effort to find a treatment for Covid-19, after The Lancet issued an “expression of concern” over a study it had published that had questioned the effectiveness of HCQ. The WHO had suspended the HCQ segment of its trial based on this study published on May 22.
Also, it has been reported that almost two months since migrants started returning to their homes, data from Uttar Pradesh, their top destination state, has seen only 3 per cent of the tested samples of migrants testing Covid positive. This trend has largely remained the same for the last 10 days.
Globally, over 6,430,705 cases have been reported, 3,85,947 people have succumbed to the infection and 2,804,982 have recovered. The United States continues to be the worst-affected nation with 1,851,520 cases and 1,07,175 deaths.
Coronavirus India LIVE updates: Family members of Charan Singh at Delhi border, who came to Delhi by train from Gujarat's Palampur village and going to Kalyanpur village in Kasganj UP. (Express photo by Gajendra Yadav)
Coronavirus India LIVE updates: Poaching of hares, among other small mammals, has shown an increase. (Source: WWF-India)
The nationwide lockdown, in an attempt to contain the coronavirus pandemic, has decimated the economy and exposed us to the “worst of both worlds”, industrialist and Managing Director of Bajaj Auto Rajiv Bajaj said during a conversation with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on the economic fallout of the shutdown.
“But you have definitely decimated the economy. You flattened the wrong curve. It is not the infection curve, it is the GDP curve. This is what we have ended (up) with, the worst of both worlds,” he said.
The industrialist also called the lockdown “draconian” and said such a situation was not even called for during the World War. “The way India has been locked down is a draconian lockdown. This kind of lockdown, I’m not hearing about from anywhere else,” he said.
As Kerala witnesses an increase in Covid-19 cases among health workers and persons with no travel or contact history, the medical fraternity has expressed concerns that community spread of the virus may have happenedin the state.
The government has officially ruled out community spread even as it has repeatedly warned that Kerala is on the brink of that danger. To allay fears of community spread, the health department had stated that the share of cases attributed to contacts is only 30 per cent of total cases.
The Delhi Police claims to have found links between an accused in the Northeast Delhi riots and the Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz. According to police, investigation into rioting that took place outside a school in Shiv Vihar on February 24 has revealed that the school’s owner, Faisal Farooque, had “links with prominent members of Popular Front of India, Pinjra Tod, Jamia Coordination Committee, Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz and some other fundamental Muslim clerics, including Deoband” which, along with his “call detail analysis”, shows “the depth of the conspiracy”.
This is the first time the Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz, which has so far been in news after it emerged as a coronavirus hotspot towards March-end, has found a mention in the Northeast Delhi riots probe.
A full autopsy of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police, was released Wednesday and provides several clinical details, including that Floyd had tested positive for COVID-19.
The 20-page report released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office came with the family’s permission and after the coroner’s office released summary findings Monday that Floyd had a heart attack while being restrained by officers, and classified his May 25 death as a homicide.
Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are reporting fresh cases of the coronavirus from new areas or in places where infections have not been reported for some time, sparking fears of community transmission of Covid-19. As many as 180 new cases were reported in Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday, including those of 94 migrants and seven foreign returnees. The state has a total of 3,898 cases, as per figures from the Union Health Ministry.
In Telangana, 99 new cases were reported on Tuesday. Among them, 12 were migrants, deportees and foreign returnees. The total number of positive cases has risen to 2,89,1 including 446 cases among migrants, deportees and foreign returnees. Read More
A testing programme necessary for lifting India’s lockdown would cost less than 2.1 per cent of the lockdown’s economic losses, researchers from India School of Business and Imperial College have found. In another metric, the study found that “a resource-intensive (testing) strategy … corresponds to less than half of the lockdown-caused loss in goods and services tax (GST) revenue.”
The pre-print study states that if 20 per cent of the population has Covid-19 antibodies (known as sero-prevalence) by the time lockdown is lifted, then authorities would need to identify and isolate symptomatic cases within five to eight days of their symptoms to prevent an overwhelmed healthcare capacity.
Hit with the coronavirus outbreak and over two months of lockdown, the Indian Railways has so far suffered a freight earnings shortfall of Rs 8,283 crore when compared to this period last year. Barring foodgrain, the national transporter carried all commodities in its freight basket much less than it did during the corresponding period last year.
Sources said passenger earnings shortfall so far — of April and May — could hover around Rs 9,000 crore by May-end, with all passenger trains suspended since late-March and with only some truncated services running since May 12, over and above the Shramik Special trains.
Rajiv Bajaj, while speaking to Rahul Gandhi, said, "I think that the first problem is to get this fear out of the minds of the people, there has to be a very clear aligned narrative, I would say from the PM because, right or wrong, when he says something people seem to follow. I think he needs to stand up and say to everyone that this is how we are going to move forward, it’s is all under control, do not fear infections, almost nobody is dying, you know and we have to move forward now."
Rajib Bajaj said, 'I strongly believe that a large country like India cannot save itself out of trouble. It has to sell itself out of trouble. We have to get demand going again, we have to provide something that lifts the mood of the people. We need some mood elevator. And I do not understand why there is no strong initiative, even if it is for a period of 6 months-1 year to strongly lift the mood of the people and provide a stimulus to demand.'
Rahul Gandhi to Rajib Bajaj: "If you look at what has happened after the lockdown, which, by the way, I call a failed lockdown. It is the only lockdown in the world where the disease is increasing after we are opening up. What you are finding is that you are going back to that anyway. The central Government has backed off and has said that now we are going to be forced to leave it to the States."
Rajib Bajaj said, "I think right from the beginning, this is my view, whether it was in terms of how this problem was to be perceived, I don’t understand how despite being an Asian country, we sought not to look at what was happening East, we looked at Italy, France, Spain, UK and the US. Which are not really the right benchmarks in any sense. Whether it is in terms of inherent immunity, temperature, demography, pre-disposition to thrombosis etc. Everything that the scientists and doctors have spoken of, we should never have been looking there."
"Even in terms of how to approach this from a medical point of view, starting with the bogey of medical infrastructure. We are all aware that there can be no medical infrastructure that can be adequate to combat something like this. But nobody was willing to explain the maths to us. We are so many people, so many are vulnerable, 5% or whatever that is. This is what that looks like, this is how we are preparing ourselves or perhaps we cannot prepare ourselves. Maybe that is not a politically appropriate thing to say. But as Narayan Murthi ji always says, when in doubt always disclose. I think we have fallen very short of disclosing-facts, logic and the truth. And this has then got amplified and instilled such an enormous fear in people that people seem to think that the contagion is equal to a contagious cancer or something. And now to change the mind of people and bring them back on board, and make them comfortable with the thought of living with the virus, which seems to be the new narrative coming from the government now. It is going to take a long time," he told Rahul Gandhi
Rajib Bajaj said, "I have friends and family, starting with Japan, because of our association with Kawasaki. People I know in Singapore, people I know in so many places in Europe. People in US of course, close friends and family in New York, Michigan, DC and when you say that the world has never been locked down like this. Disruption… the way India has been locked down is a draconian lockdown. This kind of lockdown, I’m not hearing about from anywhere else. All my friends and family from across the world have always been free to step out, to take a walk, to go and buy something they require, to go and visit someone and say hello. So in terms of the social and emotional aspects of this lockdown, they seem to have been in a much better place."
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Thursday held a video conversation with Rajiv Bajaj, MD Bajaj Auto and discussed the impact of lockdown and what it means for the Indian economy. Watch the video below:
The highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was reported from Maharashtra at 74,860, followed by Tamil Nadu at 25,872, Delhi at 23,645, Gujarat at 18,100 Rajasthan at 9,652, Madhya Pradesh at 8,588 and Uttar Pradesh at 8,729. The number of COVID-19 cases has risen to 6,508 in West Bengal, 4,390 in Bihar and 4,080 in Andhra Pradesh. Karnataka has so far reported 4,063 cases, Telangana 3,020, Haryana 2,954, Jammu and Kashmir 2,857 and Odisha 2,388. Punjab has reported 2,376 cases of coronavirus infection so far while Assam has 1,672 cases. A total of 1,494 people have been infected with the virus in Kerala and 1,085 in Uttarakhand.
Jharkhand has registered 752 cases, Chhattisgarh 668,?Tripura 468, Himachal Pradesh 359, Chandigarh 301, Manipur 118, Ladakh 90 and Puducherry has reported 82 cases. A total of 79 cases has been reported in Goa, 58 in Nagaland, 38 in Arunachal Pradesh and 33 each in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Meghalaya. Mizoram has reported 14 cases, Dadar and Nagar Haveli has eight cases while Sikkim has reported two cases till now.
Of the 260 deaths reported since Wednesday morning, 122 were in Maharashtra, 50 in Delhi, 30 in Gujarat, 11 in Tamil Nadu, 10 in West Bengal, seven each in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana, six in Rajasthan, four in Andhra Pradesh and one each in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Punjab and Uttarakhand. Maharashtra has reported the maximum 2,587 fatalities till date, followed by Gujarat with 1,122 deaths, Madhya Pradesh 371, West Bengal 345, Uttar Pradesh 229, Rajasthan 209, Tamil Nadu 208, Telangana 99 and Andhra Pradesh 68 deaths. The death toll has reached 53 in Karnataka, 47 in Punjab, 34 in Jammu and Kashmir, 25 in Bihar, 23 in Haryana, 11 in Kerala, eight in Uttarakhand and seven in Odisha. Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and Jharkhand have registered five COVID-19 deaths each, Assam has recorded four deaths while Chhattisgarh has reported two deaths so far. Meghalaya and Ladakh have reported one COVID-19 fatality each.
According to the ministry's website, more than 70 per cent of the deaths were due to comorbidities.
Nagaland reported highest single-day spike on Thursday with 22 new confirmed cases for COVID-19. The total tally of active cases in the state now stands at 80. The total active cases till Wednesday was 58.
ON MAY 8, a 75-year-old man with “severe” symptoms in Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch was referred to a Level-3 Dedicated Covid Hospital (DCH) in Indore, 250 km away. Four days later, the case was officially marked as the first Covid death in the district. Nearly a month later, little has changed in Neemuch, near the border with Rajasthan. There is still no DCH, and critical patients continue to be referred to hospitals hundreds of kilometres away.
The district of 8.26 lakh people, according to the 2011 Census, is tackling the outbreak — 208 cases and five deaths — with eight Level-1 Covid Care Centres (CCCs) for “pre-mild” and “mild” cases, only one Level-2 Dedicated Covid Health Centre (DCHC) for “moderate” cases. And a 70 per cent shortfall in the mandated number of government doctors.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has decided to resume the hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) part of its Solidarity Trial, a global effort to find a treatment for Covid-19, after The Lancet issued an “expression of concern” over a study it had published that had questioned the effectiveness of HCQ. The WHO had suspended the HCQ segment of its trial based on this study published on May 22. This study, ostensibly, used data from hospitals obtained by Chicago-based company Surgisphere founded by Dr Sapan Desai who is one of the co-authors.
Almost two months since migrants started returning to their homes, data from Uttar Pradesh, their top destination state, has seen only 3 percent of the tested samples of migrants testing Covid positive.
This trend has largely remained the same for the last 10 days. According to the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme data, currently, as many 11.68 lakh migrants who have returned to the state are under surveillance. Of them, 74,237 migrants have been tested for the infection and 2,404 have turned positive — a positivity rate of 3.2 per cent. Over the last 10 days, the average is 3 per cent of the total migrant samples tested.
With 9,304 cases and 260 deaths in the last 24 hours, the total number of COVID-19 infections in India reached 2,16,919 and the numbers of casualties soared to 6,075 on Thursday. Of the total, 1,04,106 people have been cured and discharged.