10.10 am: Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant says the government has not yet taken a decision on cancelling state board exams of Classes 10 and 12 due to rise in coronavirus cases, reports PTI.

10.02 am: South Africa has joined the United States in suspending its roll out of the Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine as agencies said they were reviewing data involving six reported cases of a “rare and severe type of blood clot” in the recipients, reports PTI.

10 am: A top health official from Telangana on Wednesday advised people to wear masks even inside homes while warning them about the possibility of spreading the coronavirus infection indoors.

Read more here: Wear masks even at homes, says Telangana’s top health official

9.59 am: A two-member team from the Defence Research Development Organisation visited Bihar’s Patna on Wednesday to help the state government to tackle the pandemic, reports the Hindustan Times. Fifty doctors of DRDO will assist the government to fully operationalise the Employees State Insurance hospital.

9.56 pm: Mumbai hospitals will use five-star hotels to treat coronavirus patients with mild infection amid a massive surge in cases, reports NDTV. The rises in cases across India has overwhelmed the health infrastructure.

9.50 am: Meanwhile, India’s principal scientific adviser K VijayRaghavan raises concern about the double mutant variant of the coronavirus found in the country, reports the Hindustan Times.

“It’s reasonable to say that the variant is of concern because it has been found in a significant number of people,” he tells the newspaper. “And it’s not just because it’s been found in a certain number of people but we know that these particular mutations have [also] got physiological effects on our context.”

Last month, the Centre had said that the double mutant variant and “variants of concern” had been detected in 18 states in India. It said that the mutations were found in 15%-20% of the analysed infected samples from Maharashtra but did not link the variant with the second wave.

Also read:

India played down new mutant Covid strains to avoid panic – but this may have backfired

9.49 am: Virologist Dr Shahid Jameel tells News18 that the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic will continue in India till May-end and the number of new daily cases may rise to about 3 lakh.

“What is really scary is the rate at which cases are increasing,” he tells News18. “If you look at the growth in active cases, that’s about 7% per day. That’s a very high rate of increase. Unfortunately, if this rate keeps on, we will be looking at somewhere around 3 lakh cases per day. And this is what some modellers are suggesting.”

9.45 am: India has vaccinated 11,44,93,238 people so far against the coronavirus, according to the government data.

9.30 am: India, which is severely affected by the second wave of the pandemic, reports 2,00,739 new coronavirus cases in a day. This is the highest ever rise in infections since the pandemic broke out in January 2020.

The country now has 1,40,74,564 total cases. With 1,038 deaths, the toll has risen to 1,73,123. As many as 1,24,29,564 people have recovered from the infection.

9.15 am: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi says that the coronavirus pandemic should be declared as a natural calamity and State Disaster Response Fund must be used to provide benefits to those affected, reports The Indian Express.

“Though the pandemic is a calamity, it is yet to be defined as a natural calamity,” Thackeray says. “So, individual benefits cannot be given as per the existing system.” He added that treating the pandemic as a natural calamity is a policy decision to be taken at the national level and the Centre has to take a call on it.”

9.09 am: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee blames the Bharatiya Janata Party for rising coronavirus cases in the state, reports NDTV. “Where were you all these days,” she asks, without naming the saffron party. “You have brought Covid and run away. We had cured everything. If they had given the vaccination to all the people in time, then there would be no new cases of Covid.”

9.05 am: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will hold a meeting with Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal today as the city stuggles to contain the new wave of the pandemic.

Hospitals and graveyards are running out of space fast in Delhi due to the massive surge in cases, NDTV reports. Mohammad Shamim, the caretaker of Delhi’s biggest graveyard near ITO, says, “From one or two bodies a day, it is now 17 bodies daily. In the last five days, the condition has deteriorated. We only have space for 90 more. If situation continues like this, then in the next 10 days, we will run out of space.”

A look at developments from Wednesday: