Coronavirus live updates: India's cases go past Italy’s count of 2,34,531

UK halts trial of hydroxychloroquine as "useless" for Covid-19 patients

British scientists halted a major drug trial on Friday after it found that the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a potential "game changer" in the pandemic, was "useless" at treating Covid-19 patients. "This is not a treatment for Covid-19. It doesn't work," Martin Landray, an Oxford University professor who is co-leading the RECOVERY trial, told reporters. "This result should change medical practice worldwide. We can now stop using a drug that is useless." Vocal support from Trump raised expectations for the decades-old drug that experts said could have been a cheap and widely available tool, if proven to work, in fighting the pandemic, which has infected more than 6.4 million people and killed nearly 400,000 worldwide Controversy surrounding the drug grew after a study published in medical journal The Lancet last month raised safety concerns and led several Covid-19 studies of it to be halted. The Lancet study was then retracted on Thursday after its authors said they were unsure about its data.

We had a discussion with CM. We suggested that devotees can be allowed subject to certain restrictions. We proposed that in temples other than Sabarimala the max no.of devotees that can be allowed at a time is 10: Travancore Devaswom Board President N Vasu

Even in absolute numbers, Ahmedabad, which has recorded 953 deaths, is second only to Mumbai with 1,698 deaths, followed by the national capital. Bangalore has recorded only 14 deaths so far and the least number of cases, just 428.

A low CFR is often seen as a result of extensive testing and hence detecting of a large number of positive cases. The higher the number of positive cases, the denominator, the smaller the CFR would be. Ahmedabad’s CFR of 6.9 has been explained by many as the result of inadequate testing. But the city’s deaths per million figure suggest there is more to the poor handling of Covid cases than just inadequate testing.

The comparison here is between the nine urban agglomerations — cities and their urban outgrowths, like Greater Mumbai or Greater Kolkata — in the country that have 5 million or more people living in them.

At 118 deaths per million, Ahmedabad is much worse than Mumbai in second place with 83 deaths per million. Among the top metros, Bengaluru seems to be doing the best with just one death per million. When it comes to CFR, Chennai’s 0.9 is the lowest among the nine mega cities. The data is as of Friday morning.

Though Delhi and Mumbai might seem to be worst off with the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths each day, Ahmedabad, with less than half the population of these metros, has the highest deaths per million population in the country. It also has the highest case fatality rate (CFR) — number of deaths per 100 cases — among the nine megapolises with populations of over 5 million.

Given current trends, India is set to rise to the fifth place on Saturday, overtaking Spain.

Deaths zoomed on Friday after Maharashtra reported as many as 139 fatalities, a bulk of the deaths having occurred earlier. Likewise, Delhi reported 58 deaths and Gujarat 35, while Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh counted 12 each and Bengal reported 11.

India's total number of Covid-19 cases went past Italy’s count of 2,34,531, taking India to the sixth spot among countries with the highest caseloads of the virus. India’s cumulative count of Covid-19 cases stood at 2,36,117.

India witnessed its highest single-day death toll in the Covid-19 pandemic so far, with 295 fatalities reported on Friday, while the count of fresh infections remained over 9,000 for the second straight day.