A health worker takes a swab sample for COVID-19 testing at a government school in New Delhi. Delhi Coronavirus, Weather Today Live Updates: The national capital on Sunday received light showers in some parts of the city, including Hauz Khas. It was a cool and cloudy Sunday morning in Delhi with the minimum temperature settling at 26.4 degrees Celsius, which is normal for the season. Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast a generally cloudy sky with light rains in the city till Monday. There are chances of a thunderstorm with rains on Tuesday, it said.
In Delhi which has seen a remarkable turnaround in the epidemic situation, the decline in the cases, which had been continuing for more than a month and a half, seems to have halted for the time being. The daily detection of cases, after falling below 1,000 earlier this month, has been going up a little bit. Between 1,200 and 1,400 new cases are being reported from the city every day. Also, the number of new cases are once again higher than the number of people being recovered.
With 1,412 fresh COVID-19 cases being recorded on Saturday, Delhi’s tally has now hit 1,60,016. The death toll reached 4,284 with 14 new fatalities, state authorities said in the latest bulletin. As per an order issued by the Delhi health department, all medical directors/ and directors of linked hospitals concerned in Delhi and all district magistrates concerned have been directed to wind up healthcare facilities operating in banquet halls with immediate effect.
Cariappa Marg in New Delhi waterlogged after heavy rains (Express Photo: Tashi Tobgyal)
A Delhi-based mushroom farmer, who had sent 10 of his workers to their home state Bihar by plane in May during the coronavirus-induced lockdown, has now booked air tickets for them and 10 other migrant labourers to return and join work here. Pappan Singh has booked tickets worth over Rs 1 lakh so that the workers, who have toiled for him, some for over 20 years, can join him in farming mushrooms during the August to April season.
Of the 20 workers, 10 of them would be flying for the first time, and they will arrive at the IGI Airport here on August 27. They will start working in the new mushroom farming season along with Singh in Delhi's Tigipur village. Talking to PTI over phone from his native village in Bihar's Samastipur district, Naveen Ram said they are excited to travel on a plane, but added that he is not nervous this time as he has the experience of his first air travel in May.
Naveen was among the 10 migrant workers who Singh had sent back home in May after they were stuck in Delhi following the coronavirus-forced lockdown in the country.
In Delhi, which has seen a remarkable turnaround in the epidemic situation, the decline in the cases, which had been continuing for more than a month and a half, seems to have halted for the time being. The daily detection of cases, after falling below 1,000 earlier this month, has been going up a little bit. Between 1,200 and 1,400 new cases are being reported from the city every day. Also, the number of new cases are once again higher than the number of people being recovered. As a result, the number of active cases have also been going up slowly. The number of deaths in the city, however, has remained low for quite some time. In the last two weeks, there have been only two occasions, when more than 20 deaths have been reported from the city. Read more here
The national capital on Sunday received light showers in some parts of the city, including Hauz Khas. It was a cool and cloudy Sunday morning in Delhi with the minimum temperature settling at 26.4 degrees Celsius, which is normal for the season. Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast a generally cloudy sky with light rains in the city till Monday. There are chances of a thunderstorm with rains on Tuesday, it said.
The number of COVID-19 containment zones in Delhi has risen from 539 on August 1 to 591 on August 21, with officials attributing the rise to smaller areas being contained now. According to data, the number of containment zones had decreased to 496 in the national capital on August 2 and had witnessed a marginal increase to 499 on August 4. The following days, the number declined to 481 and 466. On August 12, the number of containment zones went past 500. In July, the number of such areas was more than 700 in Delhi, but it gradually declined in August owing to the government allowing the "red" zones to be denotifified 14 days after the discharge of the last confirmed case, instead of the earlier norm of 28 days. (PTI)
With 1,412 fresh COVID-19 cases being recorded on Saturday, Delhi's tally has now hit 1,60,016. The death toll reached 4,284 with 14 new fatalities, state authorities said in the latest bulletin.
Delhi police Saturday detained nearly a dozen gym owners protesting near the Lieutenant Governor's office for permission to reopen fitness centres in the city, reported PTI.
"We want to request the Lt Governor to reopen gyms because it affects livelihood of over one lakh people employed in this medium-scale industry in Delhi. But police detained us and took us to Civil Lines police station," said Chirag Sethi, the vice president of Delhi Gym Association, comprising of 4,000 small and medium entrepreneurs.
The Delhi Disaster Management Authority in a Covid-19 review meeting earlier this week approved reopening of hotels and weekly markets but did not allow gyms to restart.
A top official of the Food and Drug Administration, which acts as the drug regulator in the United States, has said he would resign if there was any attempt to push through an unsafe or ineffective novel Coronavirus vaccine for political reasons, Reuters has reported.
Peter Marks, director of FDA’s Centre for Biologics Evaluation and Research, told Reuters that he had not come across any political pressure to fast-track the approval of any vaccine, but if this did happen, he would prefer to resign. Read Covid-19 vaccine tracker to find out more on the vaccine development front.
The AAP government in Delhi Friday defended in the Delhi High Court its Covid-19 regulations empowering police officers of rank sub-Inspector and above to implement fines for violation of quarantine norms, saying it was a special measure taken to contain the virus spread, PTI reported. The Delhi government told a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan that fines under the COVID-19 regulations are not in the nature of punishments under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), rather they are preventive measures contemplated in accordance with the Epidemic Diseases (ED) Act of 1897. The submission was made before the bench in an affidavit, filed through Delhi government standing counsel Ramesh Singh, which stated that under the ED Act the state is empowered to take such special measures to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases. (PTI)
No prisoner is COVID-19 positive and the situation in jails here has much improved, the Delhi Prisons Department said on Friday. So far, 63 inmates of the three jails --Tihar, Rohini and Mandoli -- have tested positive for the infection. Sixty-one of them have recovered and two died, the officials said. In August, only the Tihar Jail reported two cases and both the inmates have recovered now, officials said. On Friday, there was no inmate who was COVID-19 positive in the three jail complexes of Delhi, they said. (PTI)
DMRC chief Mangu Singh Thursday carried out an inspection at the Rajiv Chowk Metro station to check the functioning of the operational systems and maintenance activities, officials said. The inspection comes amid expectations of resumption in the Metro rail services with proper safety measures. However, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) officials described it as a "routine inspection". "MD-DMRC Dr Mangu Singh inspected the Rajiv Chowk metro station today. The routine inspection was part of checking the effective functioning of various operational systems and maintenance activities," the DMRC tweeted.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday met the family members of a sanitation worker who recently died of COVID-19, and handed over a cheque of Rs 1 crore as an ex-gratia to them. Talking to reporters during his visit in North Delhi's Majnu Ka Tilla area, Kejriwal said that sanitation worker Raju contracted the infection when he was on COVID-19 duty and died while serving the people of Delhi.
"We are proud of such 'corona warriors' who are sacrificing their lives while saving the citizens of Delhi," he said. The chief minister said that his government will provide all possible assistance to Raju's family.
With the daily growth rate continuing to slow down, the doubling time of novel Coronavirus cases in India has now dropped to 30 days. As on Thursday, there were 29.05 lakh confirmed cases in the country. The halfway stage was crossed on July 27, which means the present doubling has happened in 24 days. But the next doubling, at the current rate of growth, would happen only after 30 days, signalling a slowdown.
Doubling time is a function of the growth rate. Lower the growth, higher is the doubling time. It is one of the several metrics used to assess the pace at which the epidemic has been spreading in the population. At the start of the outbreak, in April and May, when the cases were rising rapidly, a doubling period of ten days was considered healthy for the stage of epidemic India was in at that time.
The ten-day doubling period was crossed in the first week of May, and after that there has been a steady elongation of this time.
In addition to measures like social distancing and wearing masks, an Indian-German team of scientists recommend controlling indoor humidity conditions to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus which causes COVID-19. The researchers, including those from CSIR National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, said in order to contain the pandemic, it is extremely important to implement standards for indoor air humidity in rooms with many people, such as hospitals, open-plan offices, or public transport. In their review of studies, published in the journal Aerosol and Air Quality Research, the scientists specifically drew focus on relative humidity, which is a measure of water vapour in the air compared to the total saturation of vapour that can exist in the air at its current temperature.
Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE said the Covid-19 vaccine they are jointly developing is on track to be submitted for regulatory review as early as October, as they released additional data from an early-stage study.
The companies said the vaccine was well tolerated with mild to moderate fever in fewer than 20% of the participants. The companies are continuing to analyze data from the Phase 1 trials in the US and Germany, they said in a statement.
The confirmation of their October goal, first announced last month, helped lift S&P 500 futures briefly on Friday as part of a drumbeat of positive news on inoculation efforts that have the potential to end the threat of damaging lockdowns.
According to the IMD’s latest predictions, light to moderate intensity falls are expected to occur over Delhi, Roorkee, Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra and Kaithal over the next two hours.
The second round of the serological survey in Delhi, the results of which were released on Thursday, showed that about 29 per cent of those surveyed had the presence of novel coronavirus-specific antibodies in them.
The first round of this exercise, conducted between the last week of June and first week of July, had detected antibodies in about 23 per cent of the volunteers. That means that in the one-month period between the first and second rounds, the disease spread to just about an additional six per cent of the population.
This would indicate a very significant slowdown in the spread of the disease in the national capital. Though a slowdown is evident from the drop in the reported number of cases as well, the results of the latest survey do throw up a surprise because of the extent of the slowdown that would be required to make this possible. Most of the movement restrictions in Delhi have now been lifted and people-to-people interaction has increased manifold from the time the first serological survey was conducted.
The Covid-19 tally in India rose to 2,905,823 on Friday after 68,898 fresh cases were registered within a single day. As many as 983 deaths were also recorded on Thursday, taking the total to 54,849, according to latest data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Welcome to our Delhi Coronavirus and Weather Live blog. Delhi Thursday recorded 22 deaths due to the novel coronavirus, highest single-day rise since August 7 when the city recorded 23 fatalities after progressing into a downward trend. Meanwhile, the IMD has predicted moderate rains till Friday morning. Thereafter, the intensity will decrease and the city will witness on and off light rain. Follow all the latest updates here