With nearly 55,000 new cases (54,736), the number of confirmed infections in India crossed the 17-lakh mark on Sunday.
Coronavirus India News Live Updates: Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit Sunday tested positive for COVID-19 and was advised home isolation since his infection was mild. The 80-year old Purohit was on self-isolation since July 29 after three people in the Raj Bhavan tested positive for the coronavirus. Meanwhile, the chief of Uttar Pradesh’s BJP unit, Swatantra Dev Singh, has also tested positive for Covid-19 and has quarantined himself at his home.
Earlier today, Union Home Minister Amit Shah also tested positive for Covid-19.
With nearly 55,000 new cases (54,736), the number of confirmed infections in India crossed the 17-lakh mark on Sunday. The country recorded a jump of over 1.5 lakh cases in the past three days. As many as 853 casualties took place in the last 24 hours, pushing the death toll to 37,364. Of the 17,50,724 cases, 5,67,730 are active cases, while 11,45,630 have been cured.
The World Health Organisation, has meanwhile, said that the said it expects the Covid-19 pandemic to be of “lengthy duration” and that it remains “a public health emergency of international concern.” “The pandemic is a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was quoted as telling panel. Globally, there are nearly 18 million infections, while over 6.84 lakh people have succumbed to covid-19.
Maharashtra continues to remain the worst-affected state at over 4 lakh cases.
Issuing fresh guidelines for international passengers arriving into India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) Sunday made a seven-day institutional quarantine mandatory for travelers, followed by home isolation for another 7 days.
Exceptions will be given in a few cases — human distress, pregnancy, death in family, serious illness, and parents accompanied by children below 10 years of age. They will be asked to self-isolate at home for 14 days. The new set of guidelines will come into place from August 8. Click here to read more.
In early May, an extremely well-sealed steel box arrived at the cold room of the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker.
Inside, packed in dry ice, sat a tiny 1-milliliter vial from Oxford, England, containing the cellular material for one of the world’s most promising coronavirus vaccines.
Scientists in white lab coats brought the vial to Building 14, carefully poured the contents into a flask, added a medium of vitamins and sugar and began growing billions of cells. Thus began one of the biggest gambles yet in the quest to find the vaccine that will bring the world’s COVID-19 nightmare to an end. Click here to read more.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday wished Home Minister Amit Shah a speedy recovery, after he was found to be suffering from Covid-19.
With several countries gradually opening their air space and lifting lockdown restrictions, ‘non-essential’ travel is slowly gaining traction as major airlines ramp up their services in time for the peak holiday season. However, most countries still have border closures and travel bans in place.
Borders across Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, and some Pacific island nations have begun to reopen to non-essential travel even though many countries across Africa and South America are in lockdown. US border closures remain in place with Europe, Mexico, and Canada.
Moreover, in a bid to kick-start tourism and help economies rebound, governments are implementing “travel bubbles” or air bridges between countries, allowing citizens to travel freely between specified nations. India has implemented a temporary reciprocal arrangement with the US, Germany, and France and more countries like the UK and Canada will soon be added to the list. Click here to read more.
Actor Akshay Kumar equipped the Mumbai Police with health-tracking devices which will help them deal better with the COVID-19 situation, Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray said in a tweet on Saturday.
"Earlier today, Akshay Kumar ji handed over fitness-health tracking devices to Mumbai Police. It gives a constant reading of oxygen, body temp, and heart rate, helpful in COVID battle. Last month, Akshay ji gave it to Nashik Police," the tourism minister tweeted.
Senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday wished a speedy recovery to Union home minister Amit Shah and Tamil Nadu governor Banwarilal Purohit who have tested positive for coronavirus.
"The entire nation's good wishes are with you," the former Maharashtra chief minister said responding to Shah's tweet that he has tested positive for the infection and is getting admitted to a hospital on the advice of doctors.
Police in Chhattisgarh’s Raigarh district will distribute over 14 lakh face masks to people on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan on Monday, to urge the public to make efforts towards containing the spread of COVID-19.
As part of the drive, titled Ek Rakshasutra Mask ka (one safety string of mask), the police with the support of volunteers will offer masks to people in every police station area of Raigarh, a senior official said on Sunday.
“Right from when the coronavirus outbreak began in March, the Raigarh police have been running several awareness campaigns to sensitise people about the viral infection. The district witnessed a spurt in cases in the last one month,” Raigarh Superintendent of Police Santosh Singh told PTI.
Uttar Pradesh BJP President Swatantra Dev Singh tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday. He has been advised by the doctors to stay in home quarantine.
Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit on Sunday tested positive for Covid-19. "He is asymptomatic and clinically stable," according to a statement issued by the hospital where he was tested. He has been advised to isolate himself at his residence.
Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan was discharged from Nanavati hospital on Sunday. The actor’s son Abhishek Bachchan took to Twitter to share the news.
Abhishek Bachchan tweeted, "My father, thankfully, has tested negative on his latest Covid-19 test and has been discharged from the hospital. He will now be at home and rest. Thank you all for all your prayers and wishes for him.”
Amitabh Bachchan was admitted to Nanavati hospital on July 11 after testing positive for coronavirus. Amitabh had been admitted in the hospital along with his son and actor Abhishek Bachchan, who had also contracted the disease.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday tested positive for Covid-19. "My health is fine but I am being admitted to hospital on the advice of doctors. I request all of you who have come in contact with me in the last few days to please isolate yourself and get your inquiry done," he said in a tweet.
The death toll from coronavirus in Latin America surpassed 2,00,000 on Saturday, as per a Reuters tally. Apart from the United States, Brazil and Mexico have reported more fatalities from the virus than any other country. Together, they account for around 70 per cent of the regional death toll.
Brazil reported a daily record of 1,595 coronavirus-related deaths earlier in the week and 1,088 deaths on Saturday. Mexico, meanwhile, reported 784 fatalities on Saturday and recorded over 9,000 new infections for the first time.
Peru reported 191 deaths due to the disease.
Indian craftspeople and tribal communities are turning masks into art -- from Cheriyal, Saora, to Mata ni Pachedi paintings. Here's a list.
Malls, gymnasiums and restaurants will now be allowed to open in Assam from Monday to Friday till August 15, even as movement of individuals would be strictly prohibited between 6 PM to 6 AM on all weekdays and a complete lockdown will be imposed on weekends
An order by Assam chief secretary Kumar Sanjay Krishna said that in Guwahati — the state capital which was under a complete, and then a partial, lockdown, over the last five weeks — malls and gymnasiums will be allowed to open on one side of a road on one day and the other the next. But apart from Guwahati, they would be allowed to open on both sides of roads across the state.
“Inter-district movement of people is allowed on Monday and Tuesday only. No separate permission/approval/e-permit will be required for inter-district movement,” the order said. It added that all government offices would operate with 100% attendance from Monday. The order continued, “Cinema halls, swimming pools, entertainment parks, theatres, bars, auditoriums, assembly halls and similar places of the public gathering shall remain closed.”
The administration has also allowed hotels to open.
However, Sunday’s order did not mention anything on vehicles but added that all permitted activities in the earlier order will continue between 7 am to 5 pm Monday to Friday, “subject to the opening of only one side of the street”.
As of Saturday, Assam reported a total of 41,726 COVID cases with 101 deaths and 11,265 active cases. The state’s positivity rate as on Saturday was 5.36% against 27,161 tests in the day.
A registry of hospitalised COVID-19 patients across the country is being mooted to collect real-time data which will help improve treatment outcomes, analyse trends in the progression of the pandemic and calibrate response, officials said.
The ICMR in collaboration with the Health Ministry and the AIIMS is planning to set up the National Clinical Registry which will help researchers and policy makers understand effectiveness of investigational therapies, adverse effects taking place and generate evidence for improving the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
"A systematically collected, comprehensive database covering different regions of the country will enable both researchers and policymakers to generate pertinent hypotheses, to inform crucial understanding of COVID 19, to detect trends in the progression of the pandemic and to accordingly calibrate the response to the pandemic," an official was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
The reproduction number, or the number of people getting infected by an already infected person on an average, has fallen below 1 in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, for the first time since the novel Coronavirus outbreak began in India in March. When that happens, it usually signals the beginning of the decline of an epidemic in a population group.
The latest projections, made by Sitabhra Sinha and his research group at Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, thus offer hope, at a time when India is discovering more than 50,000 new cases of infection every day. But there are important caveats. It is only in case of Delhi that this trend (of reproduction number R remaining below 1) has held on for some time, and therefore only in case of Delhi can it be used to make some reliable estimates about a future scenario. In case of Mumbai and Chennai, the present low R-values could just be part of normal variations.
In Delhi’s case, according to the estimates of Sinha’s group, the number of active cases in Delhi could fall below 1,000 by the first week of September. There were about 10,600 active cases in Delhi, as on Friday.
Recoveries among COVID-19 patients in India crossed the 11 lakh-mark on Sunday with over 51,000 patients recuperating in a 24-hour span, the highest recorded so far, pushing the recovery rate to 65.44 per cent, the Union health ministry said on Sunday. There are 5,67,730 active cases of the coronavirus infection, which is the "actual caseload" of COVID-19 for the country presently and account for 32.43 per cent of the total cases, it said. All active cases are under medical supervision either in hospitals or in home isolation. With 51,225 patients cured and discharged in a day, India's total recoveries have surged to 11,45,629 and exceeded active cases of COVID-19 by 5,77,899 as on date, while the case fatality rate has further dropped to 2.13 per cent
A potential novel Coronavirus vaccine being developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute had completed clinical trials, and ‘paperwork’ for its ‘registration’ with the country’s regulatory body was underway, Russian media reported on Saturday. Russia’s health minister was quoted in the news reports as saying that a mass vaccination programme, presumably using this vaccine, would be launched in Russia in October and that doctors and teachers would be among the first groups to be vaccinated.
The Russian vaccine has raised concerns because of the speed at which it is being pushed through. It is most likely to be approved without phase-III trials being carried out. Phase-III trials assess whether the vaccine works in real life situations, essentially whether it offers protection to the people against the disease for which it is being developed. Phase-III trials are usually carried out on several thousand volunteers, and takes months or years to be completed. Some earlier news reports from Russia had indicated that phase-III trials would be carried out alongside the deployment of the vaccine for public use. But there was no mention of this fact on Saturday.
Australia’s Victoria declared a state of disaster on Sunday, with the local government implementing a night curfew as part of its harshest restrictions on movement to contain the spread of coronavirus, Reuters reported. State Premier Daniel Andrews said that the new restrictions will be in place for six weeks until mid-September, and will allow only one person per household to go shopping once a day. People in Melbourne will not be allowed to go beyond 5 km from their homes.
Confirmed coronavirus cases are hovering at near record levels in Japan, raising worries the pandemic may be growing more difficult to control. The Tokyo government reported 292 new cases Sunday, about half in their 20s. Japan in total reported 1,540 cases on Saturday— the second straight day the number was above 1,500. Nationwide cases for Sunday will be tallied at midnight. Numbers are usually fewer over the weekend because of fewer tests. Japan has avoided a total lockdown, encouraging business activity while urging people to wear masks, social distance and work from home.