Over 28,000 Coronavirus Cases In India In 24 Hours, Biggest One-Day Jump

Veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan is reported to be in a "stable" condition with "mild symptoms" after he was tested positive for coronavirus,  the hospital said in a statement. The 77-year-old actor and his son Abhishek Bachchan, who also tested positive, are currently admitted in Mumbai's Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital. Mumbai has recorded 91,745 coronavirus cases and 5,244 deaths so far.

At least 18 people at Maharashtra's Raj Bhavan, the official residence of the governor in Mumbai, have tested positive for COVID-19. Maharashtra, which is the worst hit state, recorded its highest single-day spike on Saturday with 8,139 new infections. The state has reported 2,46,600 COVID-19 cases so far.

Delhi -- which has 1,10,921 confirmed cases -- on Saturday recorded the lowest number of active cases in the last 31 days, state health department data shows. Not a single coronavirus patient under home isolation in the city has died in July and there has been a "sharp decline" in daily fatality figures in the past two weeks, a government study on COVID-19 deaths has said.

Meanwhile, West Bengal's COVID-19 count surged to 28,453 on Saturday as 1,344 more people tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the highest single-day spike in the state so far. With 26 new fatalities, the death count rose to 906 in the state, the state health department said.

With 544 new cases, Madhya Pradesh on Saturday registered the biggest single-day rise taking the infection count to 17,201, health officials said. The number of deaths in the state has risen to 644.

With COVID-19 spreading rapidly in Guwahati that has at least 2,900 active cases, the Assam government has extended the two-week lockdown of Kamrup (Metro) district by seven more days. The lockdown has also been extended in Arunachal Pradesh's capital Itanagar and its adjoining areas. Meghalaya has decided to observe two days of total lockdown in state capital Shillong on July 13 and 14.

In the south, Karnataka capital Bengaluru will once again go into a lockdown on July 14 to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected over 16,000 people in the city. 229 people have also died due to tthe virus. Bengaluru Urban district has the highest number of cases in Karnataka accounting for more than half of the state's new cases over the last several days.

The Union health ministry has advised states, union territories against indiscriminate use drugs like Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, news agency ANI reported. "The States have been told that the available evidence for Remdesivir suggests that it may decrease the time for clinical improvement when used in moderate to severe cases. However, there have been no benefits in terms of reduced mortality. It has to be used with extreme caution due to its potential for serious adverse effects including liver and kidney injury," a health ministry official was quoted as saying by ANI.

India made the right choices in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic and is as realistically well placed as any country could be under the prevailing circumstances, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday. "In our (India's) case, recognising our capabilities and our limitations, we opted to rely very substantially on social distancing. So we went for a very early lockdown, we went for a very early travel restriction and the result of that, three months down the road... yes the actual caseload today is large, it is not large in proportion to the population," he said.

The novel coronavirus has killed over 560,000 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to news agency AFP. More than 12.5 million cases have been registered in 196 countries and territories, triggering massive economic damage. The biggest increases were from the United States, Brazil and India, according to a daily report.