Coronavirus LIVE News updates
The Centre is mulling extending the MGNREGA, the world’s biggest jobs programme, to urban areas due to the Covid-19 pandemic that has rendered millions unemployed.
“The government has been considering this idea since last year… the pandemic gave a push to this discussion,” Sanjay Kumar, a joint secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. He added that it is likely to be rolled out in smaller cities with an initial cost of around Rs 350 billion ($4.8 billion).
Meanwhile, one-fifth of Chennai has been exposed to the novel coronavirus, according to a sero survey conducted by the National Institute of Epidemiology. The study said “around 80 per cent of the population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection in Chennai”, and there is a “need to understand the reasons for varying seroprevalence across zones to improve our control measures”.
“The reading (inference) is (that) 21.5 per cent of Chennai’s population reached the immunity levels by July-end,” GCC commissioner G Prakash said. “Now, the (immunity) levels will be more and it would also mean (comparatively) lower transmission rate.”
At 23.7 per cent, the female group thus had higher seroprevalence than the male group’s 19.3 per cent, the survey reported.
As Delhi gears up to restart Metro services in the capital, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria, who has been part of the government’s core committee in formulating policies for management of Covid-19, has advised hefty fines for not wearing masks and continuing to focus on aggressive testing.
“We have to develop strategies, both in terms of increasing awareness in public and seeing how we can take measures so that even if people behave a certain way, what can we do to prevent crowding and the spread of infection. It becomes more important with the lockdown coming down and opening of Metro. The virus is looking to survive and infect more and more people,” he told The Indian Express. Read more
Mohalla Clinics in Delhi will soon be turned into Covid-19 testing centres between 2 pm and 6 pm each day, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain told The Indian Express Thursday. The decision has been made to meet the target of conducting 40,000 tests per day, which was set by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as cases in the city have started increasing again after a dip for around three weeks. On Thursday, the city recorded the highest single-day spike in 67 days as 2,737 new cases were reported. Over 32,800 tests were conducted in the same period. The death toll in the city mounted to 4,500 with 19 more deaths recorded. Read more
The coronavirus tally of Andaman and Nicobar Islands rose to 3,186 on Thursday as 26 more people tested positive for the infection, while one fresh fatality pushed the Union territory's coronavirus death toll to 47, a health official said. Four new patients have travel history, while 22 infections were detected during contact tracing, he said. Forty-four more people were cured of the disease, taking the total number of recoveries in the archipelago to 2,758, the official said. There are now 381 active Covid-19 cases in the islands, he said.
Around 9.53 lakh students have registered for JEE (Mains) while 15.97 lakh have registered for NEET. Safety, transportation and difficulty in writing exams wearing PPE are what is worrying students.
In view of virus cases in the Uttarakhand Secretariat, the State Secretariat Association has demanded that the Chief Secretary should completely shut down the secretariat for a week, ANI reported. Two sections and seven offices of Secretariat were sealed after a few positive cases were reported.
The Covid-19 pandemic will disproportionately affect women and push 47 million more women and girls into extreme poverty by 2021, reversing decades of progress to lift this demographic above the poverty line, according to new data released by the UN. The new analysis by the UN Women and the UN Development Programme said the Covid-19 crisis will dramatically increase the poverty rate for women and widen the gap between men and women who live in poverty. The poverty rate for women was expected to decrease by 2.7 per cent between 2019 and 2021, but projections now point to an increase of 9.1 per cent due to the pandemic and its fallout.
The number of idol immersions in Mumbai dipped by 32 per cent compared to last year, as Ganeshotsav ended on Tuesday. The civic body recorded 1.35 lakh immersions, out of which 70,233 idols were immersed in artificial lakes, a two-fold increase from last year. Last year, 1.96 lakh immersions were recorded, out of which 33,925 idols were immersed in artificial lakes. The civic body set up 168 artificial ponds across the city, five times more than last year. In addition, there were 37 mobile immersion sites. Muted celebrations and no processions – due to the Covid-19 pandemic – also led to a dip in noise levels during Ganesha festival, according to NGO Awaaz Foundation, which advocates against noise pollution in the city.
The Bombay High Court on Wednesday allowed Parsis to hold prayers on Farvardegan at Doongerwadi, Malabar Hill, which houses the Tower of Silence, with strict conditions and by following Covid-19 protocols. The court said not more than 200 people will be allowed throughout the day on September 3 and not more than six persons from the community and two priests for five pavilions, measuring 600 to 800 sq ft, will be allowed per hour between 7 am and 4.30 pm. A division bench of Justice R D Dhanuka and Justice Madhav J Jamdar passed an order in response to a plea filed by Viraf Mehta, trustee of Bombay Parsi Panchayat (BPP), through advocate Prakash Shah seeking permission to hold annual prayers for the dead at Doongerwadi in Mumbai. Shah referred to the Supreme Court order that allowed the reopening of three Jain temples in Mumbai for the Paryushan period and said Parsis in Mumbai should also be allowed to hold annual prayers for the dead on September 3.
Forty scientists from across four Indian Institutes of Technology in Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Delhi, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) among others, have issued a joint statement Wednesday calling for “an immediate end to the large-scale lockdown as an ongoing Covid-19 management strategy”. The Covid-19 pandemic, the scientists said, should be addressed as a public health concern rather than a law-and-order problem. “While Covid-19 is an important and new health concern, we cannot afford to ignore equally important other health concerns for so many months: child vaccinations, surveillance of infectious diseases, reproductive health care for women, management of heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, TB, etc all of which are immense problems by themselves,” the statement stated.
Veteran actor Dilip Kumar's younger brother Ehsan Khan succumbed to Covid-19 on Wednesday, according to the Bollywood star's family friend, Faisal Farooqui. He was 90. The cinema icon's two brothers, Ehsan Khan and Aslam Khan were admitted to Lilavati Hospital on August 15 after they complained of breathlessness and eventually tested positive for the virus. While Aslam Khan, 88, passed away on August 21, Ehsan Khan breathed his last late Wednesday night due to coronavirus.
Mumbai witnessed an expected surge in vehicular traffic as private offices opened up to 30 per cent of their capacity and inter-district travel norms were eased under the fourth phase of relaxation from the Covid-19 lockdown, which came into effect from Wednesday. Senior police officials said more people turned out on the roads Wednesday as compared to the last working day of the previous week. “We did not take any action against motorists Wednesday as it was the first day of the new unlock guidelines. We decided to observe the movement of traffic instead,” Pravin Padwal, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), said. Motorists are still allowed only to take their vehicles to shops within their neighbourhoods, Padwal said. “They can only take their vehicles out for valid reasons.”
India's Covid-19 tally continued to rise on Thursday after over 83,000 fresh cases were registered in a single day. While the overall figure stood at 3,853,406, the death toll also increased from 66,333 to 67,376, according to latest data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
A total of 4,55,09,380 samples were tested for Covid-19 till September 2. Of these, 11,72,179 samples were tested on Wednesday.
The Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Anil Baijal, has asked the Delhi government to explore the possibility of setting up a helpline where people can call and book appointments for tests so that more people are encouraged to come forward. Sources said the suggestion was made while discussing ways to increase testing in the city, as the number of new cases are on the rise. Last week, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that the government had set a target of 40,000 tests per day, up from an average of around 20,000 per day. The number has since been increasing slowly and on Wednesday, 28,000 tests were conducted. The suggestion was made at a meeting the L-G held with Kejriwal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Health Minister Satyendar Jain, NITI Aayog member Dr V K Paul, AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria and Delhi Chief Secretary Vijay Dev.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has put a halt to Out Patient Department (OPD) services in general and private wards for two weeks starting Wednesday to reserve beds for patients requiring hospitalisation. These beds will be reserved for seriously ill, emergency/semi-emergency Covid patients in light of the spike in infections over the last week. “Once we again see the flattening of curve or decrease in the number of cases, we will start the routine surgeries. If you do routine work and have a lot of Covid cases, then the risk of routine patients getting Covid also goes up,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, AIIMS director.
Over 30 inmates at the Bhondsi prison in Gurgaon have tested positive for coronavirus this week, said officials from the prison on Wednesday. The prison has around 2,200 inmates. According to prison officials, while 15 people tested positive on Tuesday, another 18 tested positive on Wednesday. All of them have been moved to the isolation facility at the Government College in Sector 9.
Some 500 regular trains will be discontinued and 10,000 stops across the Indian Railways’ network will be erased in a new timetable for operations that will be adopted once the pandemic ends and services return to normal. The Railways expect to increase their annual earnings by more than Rs 1,500 crore through this new “zero-based timetable”. This estimated extra earning will come without having to raise fares or other charges – it will be a byproduct of the timetable, and will happen as a result of operational policy tweaks, according to internal projections of the Ministry of Railways. The new timetable will make room to run 15 per cent more freight trains on exclusive corridors at higher speeds. The average speed of passenger trains is projected to increase by around 10 per cent across the network.
The condition of the BJP's Uttar Pradesh vice-president and Noida MLA Pankaj Singh, who is undergoing treatment at the AIIMS here after testing positive for COVID-19, is stable, sources told PTI Wednesday.
The 41-year-old politician, who is the son of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, on Tuesday said that he has tested positive for COVID-19 and urged people who recently came in contact with him to get themselves tested for the infectious disease. "On getting the initial symptoms of coronavirus, I got myself tested and the report has come positive. I have got myself hospitalised on the advice of doctors. I request that all of you, who have come in contact with me in the last a few days, please isolate yourself and get your inquiry done," Singh tweeted in Hindi.
He had in March isolated himself as a precautionary measure after it emerged that he was in a room for a press conference with Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Jay Pratap Singh, who was in a party in Lucknow with singer Kanika Dhillon who was COVID-19 positive.(PTI)
The novel coronavirus toll in Punjab rose to 1,618 on Wednesday with a record 106 more deaths, while 1,514 new cases took the tally to 56,989, the Health Department said.
There are 15,629 active cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and 39,742 people have recovered so far, with 1,595 more patients recuperating from the pathogen, according to a medical bulletin.
Ludhiana registered the highest number of 242 COVID-19 cases, followed by 171 in Jalandhar, 163 in Bathinda, 160 in Patiala, 112 in Mohali, 99 in Amritsar and 64 in Faridkot. The total number of infections rose to 56,989, including 1,618 deaths, it said. (PTI)
The Chinese capital is opening up to international travel after a gap of six months following the COVID-19 pandemic with an official announcement saying that flights from eight countries, including its 'all-weather ally' Pakistan, would be permitted from Thursday.
Beijing, which banned all international flights from March 23, on Wednesday announced plans to resume direct international flights beginning Thursday, signalling that the pandemic has been contained in the city, the Associated Press reported.
Flights connecting Thailand, Cambodia and Pakistan in Asia; Greece, Denmark, Austria and Sweden in Europe and Canada in North America -- countries with relatively small numbers of imported cases -- will resume.
Haryana reported 15 more COVID-19 fatalities on Wednesday, taking the death toll to 721 as the state recorded its highest single-day spike of 1,792 new cases, the health department's daily bulletin said. With this, the infection tally in the state rises to 68,218. While Panipat, Karnal, Kurukshetra, Yamunanagar and Fatehabad reported two fatalities each, one death each was reported in Sirsa, Hisar, Rohtak, Ambala and Faridabad. (PTI)
With the Centre allowing gradual resumption of metro train services across the country under ‘Unlock 4.0' from September 7, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced standard operating procedures (SOPs) for metro operations.
Puri said that multi-route metro networks should resume trains from September 7 in a graded manner so that all lines were operational by September 12, 2020. Besides mandatory wearing of masks and thermal screening at entry gates, the Union Minister said frequency of trains should be regulated to avoid passenger crowding at stations and in coaches.
Metro stations in Covid-19 containment zones will, however, remain closed. Metro services were suspended in late March when the government announced a nationwide lockdown to check the spread of the novel coronavirus. Click here to read full guidelines.
Nepal's coronavirus tally jumped to 41,649 on Wednesday with 1,120 new COVID-19 cases recorded across the country, a senior health official has said.
The country also recorded 12 new coronavirus-linked deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the toll to 251, said Dr Jageshwar Gautam, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Population.
In total, 1,112 people, who earlier tested positive for the virus, have been discharged from various isolation centers across the country after full recovery, he said. (PTI)
Pope Francis has held his first public general audience after a pause of nearly six months due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Francis used Wednesday's audience to call for solidarity as the way to exit the crisis.
Francis said: "The current pandemic has highlighted our interdependence: We are all linked to each other, for better or for worse." He added: "To come out of this crisis better than before, we have to do so together, all of us, in solidarity."
Union Health Ministry Wednesday said that India has been reporting one of the lowest COVID-19 fatality rates in the world with the figure further declining to 1.76 per cent as on date against a global average of 3.3 per cent. It also said that COVID-19 deaths per million population in India is one of the lowest in the world.
"While the global average is 110 deaths per million population, India is reporting 48 deaths per million population. The comparative figure for Brazil and the UK is 12 and 13 times higher, respectively," the ministry said.
Amid a surge in Covid-19 cases in Delhi, the All India Medical Sciences (AIIMS) announced suspension of the Outpatient Department (OPD) admissions in general and private wards for two weeks starting Wednesday.
The decision was taken to reserve beds for seriously ill, emergency/semi-emergency COVID-19 patients in light of the spike in virus infections in the past week.
As the AIIMS Trauma Centre has been converted into a dedicated Covid-19 facility, Medical superintendent Dr DK Sharma said, “the decision was taken in view of the uptick in Covid-19 cases and to accommodate trauma emergencies.”
Mandatory wearing of masks, thermal screening at entry gates, leaving alternate seats vacant, contactless ticketing — travelling in metro trains amid the Covid-19 pandemic is not going to be the same. With the Centre allowing gradual resumption of metro train services across the country under ‘Unlock 4.0' from September 7, almost all the states with metro connectivity, except Maharashtra, are set to begin operations keeping in mind local requirements.
Currently, 10 cities have functional metro rail networks — Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Kochi and Lucknow. While restoring riders’ confidence will remain a challenge in the near future, for some cities like Delhi, where the metro is considered the city’s lifeline, the resumption of services is also closely knit with economic recovery. Click here to read the full report.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has gone into self-quarantine once again after his OSD tested positive for Covid-19, news agency PTI reported quoting its sources. A meeting of the state cabinet scheduled for Wednesday has also been postponed as a result, the agency said. Rawat had earlier gone into self-quarantine for three days as a precaution on August 25 after one of his advisors had tested positive.
The Tamil Nadu government has allowed inter-district bus transport and passenger train services within the state from September 7."Considering public welfare, following the Standard Operating Procedure, from September 7, inter-district government and private bus transport will be allowed across Tamil Nadu," Palaniswami said in a statement. Similarly, from the same date, passenger train services within Tamil Nadu shall be permitted, he said.
By the last week of April, with only two dozen active Covid-19 cases and barely 500 new cases since January 30, Kerala had claimed to have flattened the curve when other states were struggling. Four months on, Kerala ranks 14 among states with a high caseload.
On September 1, Kerala had 76,525 confirmed cases, 31% of them active, compared to just 21.3% active cases at the national level. Of Maharashtra’s 7. 92 lakh cases, only 25% were active
The recent spike can be linked to increased testing. On August 26, when 40,352 samples were processed, Kerala reported a record 2,476 cases. On August 31, new cases were at 1,530 out of 18,027 samples. On September 1, when tests came down to 14,137, positive cases fell to 1140.
There is an unusual consistency in the daily number of new cases of novel coronavirus infections reported by Tamil Nadu for the last one month. On 23 days in August, the state reported between 5,800 and 6,000 cases every day, leading to an almost flat-line curve for daily numbers in the month of August (see graph below).
Other states reporting comparable numbers, like Uttar Pradesh or Karnataka or Bihar showed much greater fluctuations in their daily numbers. So did the country as whole, which reported between 50,000 and 80,000 new cases a day during August.
This kind of consistency in daily discovery of new cases was not seen even in Tamil Nadu in the previous months. One of the reasons could be a similar consistency in the number of tests being carried out. The other reason could be that the laboratories in the state have the ability to process only that many tests every day. The daily testing numbers have remained more or less constant in Tamil Nadu during the month of August, though not with the same kind of regularity that is seen in the number of positive cases.
Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac has said states would not give up on the issue of GST compensation as it was their constitutional right. Speaking to The Indian Express, Isaac said the Centre must borrow to make good the shortfall.
“This is all meaningless. Whether the state borrows or the Centre borrows, the macroeconomic impact will be the same. Nobody looks at the fiscal deficit of the Centre and states, they see the combined fiscal deficit. And therefore, impact on the economy will be the same. We have had a 24 per cent decline in GDP and how can anybody think of cutting expenditure. All our budgets have been premised upon 14 per cent increase in the GST and therefore, the moment they say they won’t provide compensation for Covid loss, saying there is no expenditure against Covid, that you are giving a peer stimulus, you are not following a contra-cyclical policy but a pro-cyclical policy. The revenues have come down, therefore, cut your expenditures. This is pro-cyclical. Which government in the world is following that?” he said.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced on May 14 that migrants would receive free foodgrain for two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The ration would be distributed to those who were neither beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) nor had ration cards in the state they were stationed in.
However, data analysed by The Indian Express showed that only 33 per cent of free foodgrains and 56 per cent of free gram (whole) have reached the intended beneficiaries.
Further, till August 31, all the states and Union Territories have been able to distribute only 41 per cent of 6.38 lakh tonnes of foodgrains they had lifted under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat package.
One-fifth of Chennai has been exposed to the novel coronavirus, according to a sero survey conducted by the National Institute of Epidemiology. The study said “around 80 per cent of the population is still susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection in Chennai”, and there is a “need to understand the reasons for varying seroprevalence across zones to improve our control measures”.
“The reading (inference) is (that) 21.5 per cent of Chennai’s population reached the immunity levels by July-end,” GCC commissioner G Prakash said. “Now, the (immunity) levels will be more and it would also mean (comparatively) lower transmission rate.”
At 23.7 per cent, the female group thus had higher seroprevalence than the male group’s 19.3 per cent, the survey reported.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant Wednesday became the latest addition to the growing list of prominent political leaders who contracted the coronavirus. The 47-year-old BJP leader said he is asymptomatic and under home isolation. Here’s a list of senior politicians who have tested positive for Covid-19 so far:
# Pranab Mukherjee, who passed away on Monday.
# Home Minister Amit Shah
# Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan
# Karnataka CM BS Yediyurappa
#Former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah
# Karti Chidambaram
# Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan
# Union Minister Gajendra Shekhawat
# Former Assam CM Tarun Gogoi
Echoing the sentiments of several states on the issue of GST compensation, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modirequesting him to advise the Finance Ministry not to go ahead with the plans of transferring the burden of GST compensation on the states.
“It is felt that transferring the obligation of GST compensation to the States through their borrowing is not in accordance with the spirit of understanding reached between the Centre & the States during the discussions preceding the constitutional amendment for bringing in GST. The two borrowing options sent by the Ministry of Finance, Govt of India on August 30, 2021 go against this and need to be withdrawn (sic),” Vijayan wrote in a letter to PM Modi.
President Donald Trump asserted that thousands more people have died from the coronavirus in China than the Beijing government has acknowledged, without citing any evidence.
“They lost tens of thousands of people,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham that was broadcast on Tuesday night. “They lost more than any other country, they just don’t report it.”
China has reported 4,724 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University — far fewer than the 184,644 deaths in the U.S., which has the highest number in the world.
One of the world’s fastest-moving efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine is falling behind rivals, its advance appearing to be stymied by political tensions between China and Canada and concerns its shot may not work as well as others.
CanSino Biologics Inc., the Chinese company which in March started the world’s first human tests on an experimental coronavirus shot, has yet to kick off critical final-stage trials on the vaccine it developed with the Chinese military. Meanwhile, rivals like U.S.-based Moderna Inc. and Britain’s AstraZeneca Plc as well as China’s Sinovac Biotech Inc. and Sinopharm are well into this last phase of testing, administering their vaccines on thousands of people to find out if they work.
With its Phase III trials yet to begin, CanSino hasn’t had the opportunity to assuage concerns from earlier-stage data, which showed the immune response generated by its shot varied greatly among participants. Its setbacks offer a look at both the scientific and political incertitudes companies are battling as they race to produce a vaccine against the virus that has already killed more than 850,000 people worldwide.
Forty-two-year-old Pandurang Raikar, a TV 9 channel reporter based in Pune, succumbed to coronavirus early Wednesday morning. He was 42 and is survived by wife, two kids and parents. His family and journalist friends alleged that a private hospital in Ahmednagar delayed admitting him unless he made an advance payment of Rs 40,000.
Raikar who was brought to Pune's jumbo hospital at COEP from Ahmendgar on Tuesday evening passed away early morning after his saturation level dipped drastically.
According to Kunal Raikar, a close relative, the journalist had undergone a swab test in Pune two days after Ganesh installation. "The test was negative. He then decided to take rest and return to Ahmednagar, his home town." -- reports Manoj More
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday. Taking to Twitter, Sawant said he is asymptomatic and will remain in home isolation. “I wish to inform all that I have been detected COVID 19 positive. I am asymptomatic and hence have opted for home isolation. I shall continue to discharge my duties working from home. Those who have come in my close contract are advised to take the necessary precautions,” he tweeted.
Welcome to our Coronavirus LIVE blog. With India reporting 78,357 cases and 1.045 deaths in the last 24 hours, the total number of Covid-19 infections in the country crossed the 37 lakh mark to reach 37,69,524 and toll soared to 66,333 on Wednesday. Of the total, 8,01,282 are active cases while 29,019,09 people have been treated and discharged so far, pushing the recovery rate to 76.98 per cent, according to the Union Health Ministry. The fatality rate, on the other hand, has further declined to 1.76 per cent.