Coronavirus India LIVE Updates: Maharashtra govt extends lockdown in state till July 31

An order issued by Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta on Monday said wearing face covers or masks, maintaining social distancing, restricted gatherings, and other measures shall continue to prevail in Maharashtra. The state government has also advised that work from home should be followed as far as possible.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government on Monday extended lockdown in the state till July 31. It has also applied Mumbai police's diktat on allowing only neighbourhood movement to all municipal corporations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Municipalities have been empowered to decide on easing of curbs outside the containment zones.

Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy and the staff at his residence on Monday tested negative for COVID-19. However, the Chief Minister has been advised seven days home quarantine.

CM Narayanasamy and staff at his residence had undergone the examination for COVID-19 on Sunday after one of the staff had tested positive a few days ago.

A BJP MLA from Rewa in Madhya Pradesh test positive for novel coronavirus on Monday, news agency PTI reported. The swab sample of the MLA was collected on Sunday and contract tracing had begun as per protocol.

Three legislators, two from the BJP and one from the Congress, have been detected with the infection this month.

A coronavirus patient at Government Chest Hospital in Hyderabad died after doctors allegedly refused to put him on ventilator support last week. In a video, which he shot at the isolation ward of the hospital before he died, and was addressed to his father, 35-year-old V Ravikumar said doctors did not provide him with a ventilator even after he complained of breathing problem. Hospital authorities, however, refuted the allegations and said the patient died after he developed myocarditis.

China reported a further decline in coronavirus cases, with just 12 new cases on Monday, the Associated Press reported. Seven of these new cases were from Beijing, where as many as 8.3 million people have been tested in recent weeks. The National Health Commission said that new cases in the city were down by half from the day before. Beijing had shut a wholesale food market where the virus spread widely earlier this month, closed schools again and locked down some neighbourhoods. Those leaving Beijing are required to have a negative virus test result within the previous seven days.

At least 50 inmates of Akola District Prison have tested positive for Covid-19, taking the total number of positive cases among prison inmates in Maharashtra to 360. At least 11 prisons across the state have registered coronavirus cases till now.

On 24 June, 18 inmates were discovered to have coronavirus in the Akola District prison, following which more tests revealed at least 50 cases. Meanwhile, over the last four days, Thane Central and Mumbai Central prisons have reported 11 and three positive cases among staff members, respectively.

Rajasthan will allow the reopening of religious places in rural areas with a limited number of devotees from July 1, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said, ensuring that all precautionary measures to curb the spread of coronavirus will be in place. Only those religious sites in rural areas have been given permission to reopen where 50 or less people visit per day on normal days. During this, social distancing, sanitisation and wearing masks etc and other standard operating procedures need to be ensured, the CM said.

South Africa’s current surge of Covid-19 cases is expected to dramatically increase in the coming weeks and press the country’s hospitals to the limit, the health minister said Sunday, the Associated Press reported.

Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize said in a statement that out of 1,38,000 confirmed cases, more than 4,300 people have been hospitalised. He further warned that this number is likely to rise rapidly. “We are seeing a rapid rise in the cumulative number of Covid-19 cases indicating that, as we expected, we are approaching a surge during the months of July and August,” Mkhize said in a statement.

The number of confirmed novel Coronavirus infections across the world crossed the ten million mark on Sunday, with half of these being accounted for by just four countries, the United States, Brazil, Russia and India. The United States has more than 2.5 million infections while Rusia and India have more than half a million each.

Globally, the infections are currently growing at the rate of about 1 to 2 per cent, which means that between 100,000 and 200,000 new infections are being detected every day. This number is still significantly higher than the number of people recovering from the disease every day, in the range of 80,000 to 130,000, and that would suggest that, even at the global level, the peak of the disease is still some distance away.

The European Union will have a list of COVID-19-safe countries for travel purposes ready by Tuesday at the latest, Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said on Monday. EU officials are preparing a list of 15 countries that are safe for open borders based on epidemiological criteria, she told local radio Cadena SER, as the coronavirus pandemic wanes on most of the continent.

The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government has decided to start India's first Plasma bank. "Delhi govt will set up 'Plasma bank'; request people to donate plasma to save lives of COVID-19 patients. The government has so far conducted clinical trials of plasma therapy on 29 COVID-19 patients and the results have been positive. The bank will start operation in two days. This 'Plasma Bank' will be set-up at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences in Delhi. Anyone who needs plasma will need a recommendation from a doctor."

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal paid tribute to Dr Aseem Gupta of city government-run LNJP Hospital who died battling the virus. He also announced Rs one crore for Dr Gupta's family. "Dr Aseem Gupta, a senior doctor of LNJP Hospital passed away due to COVID19 yesterday. We salute his spirit and sacrifice. His family will be given a compensation amount of Rs 1 Crore by our government."

As Bengaluru faces a bed crunch, the in-house software development team of the Karnataka Covid-19 War Room has been tasked with developing an application that will help patients in getting a hospital bed with as much ease as getting as a cab.

Munish Moudgil, an IAS officer whose team is working on the hospital bed app and the head of the state Covid 19 war room said, “We want to create an app for citizens that will work like an Ola or Uber app for access to hospital beds. Only those who test positive will be able to book a hospital bed and will be put on a list.” The app will verify the list with the ICMR database of persons who test positive for the Covid 19 each day and the bed allocations will happen only for those who test positive, Moudgil said.

Telangana's Home Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali tested positive for Covid-19 and is undergoing treatment at a private hospital. The 68-year-old was having symptoms since the last four days. The government is considering a total lockdown in areas under Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) amid a drastic surge in Covid cases — 888 of the 1,087 positive cases reported on Saturday were from GHMC areas — in Hyderabad. Officials said a new strategy is being worked out and a total lockdown in GHMC areas is among the proposals.

South Korea has reported 42 new infections of COVID-19 as infections steadily climb in the greater capital area, forcing authorities to consider stronger social restrictions. With people increasingly venturing out in public, new clusters are tied to a variety of places.

Health Minister Park Neung-hoo during a briefing Sunday afternoon announced that the government is prepared to implement stronger social distancing measures if the epidemic continues to grow. He said the strongest measures — including banning all gatherings of more than 10 people, shutting schools, halting professional sports, and restricting operations of non-essential businesses — will be enforced if the daily increase in infections doubles more than two times during a span of a week.

A reported tally Sunday from Johns Hopkins University researchers said the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic had topped 500,00. About 1 in 4 of those deaths – more than 125,000 – have been reported in the U.S. The country with the next highest death toll is Brazil, with more than 57,000, or about 1 in 9.

The World Health Organisation announced another daily record in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across the world - topping over 189,000 in a single 24-hour period. The tally eclipses the previous record a week earlier at over 183,000 cases, showing case counts continue to progress worldwide.

The infections in India inched closer to 5.5 lakh-mark with 19,459 new cases being reported in the last 24 hours. The toll also rose to 16,459 after 380 deaths were reported. Of the 5,48,318 cases, 3.2 lakh patients have recovered, while 2.1 lakh infections are still active. 

The COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed the world economy into a tailspin, with 2020 projected to be worse than any of the years since the global financial crisis. But billionaires, at least a select group of them across countries, have seen their wealth soar during the past three months, which have been financially painful for most people across the world. What's been the trend across the globe? What about Indian billionaires? We explain