India is trailing only the US (45,79,761) and Brazil (26,62,485) in the number of coronavirus infections globally
Coronavirus India News Live Updates: 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.
Uttar Pradesh minister Kamal Rani Varun, who had earlier tested positive for the novel coronavirus, died due to the infection in Lucknow on Sunday. Expressing condolences, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath called her a “popular public leader who worked efficiently.”
As the Covid surge continues across the country, good news is coming out of Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, with the R-number (an index of transmission) in each falling below 1. For Delhi, it has been the most enduring. It has stayed at that level for the whole of July and if current trends hold — no major disruptive event and people persist with precautions — the active caseload come September can fall below 1000.
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.
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.
Tamil Nadu went on a total shutdown mode on Sunday with the government imposing intense curbs as part of its anti-coronavirus measures, leaving main roads deserted while most shops, barring pharmacies, remained closed. Roads were virtually empty with no vehicles plying on account of the strict implementation of the curbs, with police making it clear that private vehicles will be allowed only for emergency purposes. While announcing extension of the coronavirus-induced lockdown to August, Chief Minister K Palaniswami had said on July 30 that complete curbs will be in place on all five Sundays this month also, much like in July. There will be no relaxations, he had said.
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players” — taking a cue from Shakespeare, entrepreneur-magician Pravin Sonawane has converted the drawing room of his house into a studio and continued to entertain his viewers ‘live’ using his mobile phone amid the extended lockdown. The gadgets used are simple: a three-legged flower vase for a tripod, rubber contraptions to hold the mobile phone in place, and a light atop it for a spotlight. While live-streaming a trick, Sonawane also uses a headphone to hear and interact with his virtual audience.
Sonawane has live-streamed his shows on online platforms like Zoom, Meetup, Facebook and Instagram, usually with 50 or more viewers. A typical show starts with him pulling a pigeon out of a handkerchief, and gradually moves on to the more routine fire and card tricks. Throughout the show, Sonawane constantly interacts with his audience. See more
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering sealing off Greater London and ordering at-risk members of the population to stay at home under a potential scenario designed to avert a second national lockdown, according to news reports.
Possible measures include locking down the capital if infection rates spike and tightening quarantine rules on those flying into the U.K., The Sunday Telegraph reported. There would be travel curbs in and out of the M25 highway encircling Greater London and a ban on overnight stays, according to the Sunday Times. Elderly people and those considered to have an increased risk from Covid-19 could be asked to stay at home, and “harder” local lockdowns could be ordered than the restrictions already imposed on parts of northern England.
Uttar Pradesh minister Kamal Rani Varun, who had earlier tested positive for the novel coronavirus, died due to the infection in Lucknow on Sunday. Expressing condolences, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath called her a “popular public leader who worked efficiently.” “I express my deepest condolences to the family of Cabinet Minister Kamala Rani Varun. She was COVID19 positive and was receiving treatment at SGPGI Hospital. She was a popular public leader & a social worker. She worked efficiently while being the part of the Cabinet,” he tweeted.
A 35-year-old staffer at the India International Centre (IIC) has tested positive for Covid-19, and at least 17 employees are now under home quarantine. The man, a utility worker in the kitchen, is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in East Delhi, and has been on leave since July 23.
Kanwal Wali, secretary of the executive committee, IIC, said, “The utility worker last reported to duty on July 22 and asked for a leave till July 31 as his family was sick. On Friday, he called us and said that he has tested positive. We checked who all were on duty with him on July 22 and have asked them to be under home quarantine for five-six days.”
Sixteen people who had fully recovered from Covid-19 donated plasma at the blood banks of Sion, KEM and Nair hospitals, civic officials said Saturday. The donors were among the 42 people identified by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) as fit to donate plasma at a first-of-its-kind plasma screening camp organised at Dharavi from July 23. A total of 181 residents of Dharavi, who had recovered from the viral disease, had attended the six-day screening camp. With the success of its first camp, the civic body is planning to organise a second such camp in the slum sprawl.
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.
An emergency committee of the World Health Organization said it expects the Covid-19 pandemic to be of “lengthy duration” and that it remains “a public health emergency of international concern,” the WHO said in a statement Saturday.
“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 on Friday. “Many countries that believed they were past the worst are now grappling with new outbreaks.” The committee recommended a sustained attack on the virus on all fronts, from testing and tracing to developing treatments to vaccines. (Bloomberg)
The first report in India on the genome of SARS-CoV-2 has found that a particular variant of the virus brought in mainly by travellers from Europe has become the most prominent across the country, giving rise to the hope that it may be easier to deal with a more “homogenous’’ entity than those with different lineages. According to scientists involved in the study, the finding also suggests that the stringent nationwide lockdown that was in place between March and May “has actually worked’’ since the ban on international and inter-state travel “prevented the entry of new lineages of the virus”.
As the Covid surge continues across the country, Mumbai and Chennai, with the R-number (an index of transmission) in each falling below 1. For Delhi, it has been the most enduring. It has stayed at that level for the whole of July and if current trends hold — no major disruptive event and people persist with precautions — the active caseload come September can fall below 1000.
Delhi, which has seen a remarkable turnaround in its Coronavirus situation in the last one month, is the brightest spark in the latest round of modelling projections made by Sitabhra Sinha and his research group at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai.
A 35-year-old staffer at the India International Centre (IIC) has tested positive for Covid-19, and at least 17 employees are now under home quarantine. The man, a utility worker in the kitchen, is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in East Delhi, and has been on leave since July 23.
Kanwal Wali, secretary of the executive committee, IIC, said, “The utility worker last reported to duty on July 22 and asked for a leave till July 31 as his family was sick. On Friday, he called us and said that he has tested positive. We checked who all were on duty with him on July 22 and have asked them to be under home quarantine for five-six days.” Read more
Restrictions on the movement of over two lakh people were removed after the containment zones in the city were reassessed based on revised guidelines. By Friday, the total number of containment zones in the city was 496, down from 715 on Monday. The number of people in these zones went from 3,48,099 on Monday to 1,06,211 on Friday.
As per the new guidelines, a containment zone can be de-sealed 14 days after the last Covid patient in the area has recovered. This duration was earlier 28 days and there were a few areas in the city that remained sealed for up to three months. Read more